AU Rejoicing in Their Strength (Lomonaaeren)
by YouSlyGryffindor
Summary: UP FOR ADOPTION! (Originally a Drarry Story by Lomonaaeren, but I altered and extended it.) Dom!Harry Werewolf!Fic Slash. Snarry. Non-epilogue compliant. MPreg? UP FOR ADOPTION!
1. Chapter 1

Rejoicing In Their Strength Spinoff

(Original is a drarry fanfic by Lomonaaeren.)

Chapter 1

Title: Rejoicing in Their Strength

Disclaimer: This stuff belongs to JK Rowling, and I'm just a broke girl that loves slash.

Rating: R

Warnings: Torture, violence, profanity, insanity, character death (not Harry or Severus), creature!fic (werewolf!Harry). Takes place after DH but ignores the epilogue and Severus's death. Dominant!Harry Submissive!Severus

Pairing: Harry/Severus

Summary: Severus went home after the war, and his father has trapped him there hurt him as he went mad after his wife's death. Severus escapes at times by astral travel. During one of his journeys, he is astonished to find Harry Potter, who vanished after the war, living in the Forest of Dean.

Author's Notes:This fic is rather graphic in its descriptions of the torture that Tobias inflicts on Severus. Tread with caution. The original ended at part 8, but I continued it to make that just an intro.

Rejoicing in Their Strength

"Severus, how are you?"

Severus closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was always worst when his father began the torture by talking to him pleasantly. It would be better if he could wear out that initial politeness and let the madness emerge. He lay motionless, as if asleep, and listened to his father padding nearer, his bare feet soft on the flagstones of the underground basement.

"Oh, Sevvy." Tobias's voice was soft with sorrow, which was worse still. "Do you think you can escape? You can't. I have to cure you, and I'll do that no matter how much you scream, because it's my responsibility as your father to heal you."

Worst of all. Severus decided that he might as well meet his fate head-on, and sat up and turned sideways on the raised "bed" that Tobias confined him to whenever he wanted Severus to stay in the lab. A cage of blue light surrounded the bed, one that Severus could have done something about it if he had his wand. Of course, Tobias had seized that long ago, and he always kept Severus naked, so even if the cage did someday miraculously disappear, Severus wouldn't get very far.

Not in any conventional way, at least.

Tobias examined him approvingly, and then nodded. "Much better, I think. The sores have cleared up, haven't they?"

The "sores" were welts left from the last whipping To had inflicted on him. Severus swallowed. "Yes, sir, they have," he whispered.

Tobias stepped through the blue light as if it wasn't there and laid a caressing hand on Severus's shoulder. "You don't need to say 'sir' to me," he said, eyes clear and concerned. "I'm your beloved father. There should be no formality between us."

Severus nodded, gaze on the ground. Of course, if he forgot to say "sir" and addressed Tobias by name, then the whippings and the "treatments" were worse. But Tobias never remembered that during the moments before the thickest madness descended.

"Good!" Tobias stepped back and clapped his hands. "I think we'll try the salt treatment today. That one seems to be most effective."

Then I'll definitely have to go away, Severus thought, and closed his eyes as his father raised his wand and began to chant the spell that would turn Severus's blood to salt in his legs. It hurt like nothing else (except some of the other cruel "treatments" Tobias had thought up) and Severus simply couldn't stay in his body and bear it.

It wasn't that he didn't want to fight. But without a wand, and against a wizard of Tobias's power and insane determination—against the man who had killed his mother—it was impossible.

When he heard the first syllables of the spell echoing off the stone walls, Severus snapped his spirit out of his body and went.

Severus opened his eyes to find himself hovering in a dark purple mist lit by small silver sunbursts, which resolved into five-pointed stars if he looked at them closely enough. He could feel nothing, which wasn't a surprise. His "body" here was a wispy thing, formed out of spirit and fog, so transparent the stars could easily shine through it. But he could see and hear, and that was enough for him.

He didn't know if this place in between the house where his body lay and his destinations was real or not. He wasn't entirely sure that the visions he saw when he "traveled" were real. But that didn't matter, as long as they took him away from Tobias.

It's not as though I'll ever get to use my information to threaten anyone or earn freedom, he thought sardonically. He'd tried, in the days when he thought he might still be able to get access to Floo powder or an owl. Tobias had cast a spell that Severus recognized in retaliation, one that would cut off his fingers if he went near either one again.

Though isn't that counterproductive, that you fight to keep your body whole when dying would mean you were free?

Severus shook his head. He had long since stopped questioning most of the decisions he made. He thought he was going mad himself, but there was so little he could do to help that that he ignored the sensation and went ahead.

Into the future. Seeking some possibility of escape.

That's what brought you here, Severus reminded himself, and then turned his gaze towards the transparent dark blue floor beneath him. He wanted to go somewhere green tonight, somewhere wild, where freedom still sang in the open and walked beneath the branches. It hardly mattered where his magic took him. No one had ever shown the ability to see him. Otherwise, Severus would have used this method to seek out help.

As always, once he had pictured a likely destination in his mind, the magic that drove him this far reached out and chose a place. A cord suddenly snapped taut between Severus and that place, and his "body" hurtled down through the misty floor like a diving hawk.

Severus rushed into green light, and golden. He blinked in surprise. He hadn't realized Tobias was torturing him during daylight. Of course, it was rather easy to lose track of time in a dungeon.

All around him, tall trees reached arched branches to the sky. The grass and moss underneath were littered with only occasional briars or weeds; Severus thought the trees had blocked the sunlight from reaching the forest floor. Drifts of autumn leaves from last year, now mostly black, were more common.

And right in front of him was a tall young woman with long tawny hair, walking along a sandy trail with a swinging stride.

Severus thought of leaving again, and the simple action made the forest grow mistier around him. He had wanted a completely uninhabited place. The presence of this woman suggested it wasn't.

One thing made him stay and look more closely at the woman, though. She had sticks tangled into and woven through her hair. Why would anyone, even someone camping in the woods, bear that instead of stopping to pick them out?

The longer he looked—his spirit automatically flashed through the woods after the woman as she moved on—the more oddities he saw. Her feet were bare. Dirt was worked in under her fingernails, most of which were broken. A series of white scars crisscrossed her left forearm, resembling bites.

Probably she's just a Muggle runaway, Severus silently argued with himself. Or someone camping who hasn't had the chance to bathe yet. There's no reason for me to stay.

He could at least look in on her destination, though. That might prove entertaining. Severus was continually amused, now that he had the leisure to examine them, about the sorts of hardships that Muggles put themselves through. He hadn't had the chance to see the way they scrambled in the wild.

The woman rounded a corner in the trail and came out into the middle of a wide glade. Severus blinked and glanced around. The only way he might have seen this clearing was from above; it was well-hidden by a thick wall of trees that drew back abruptly to reveal the open space of grass. In fact, he thought the abruptness unnatural. Someone had cut those branches that might have projected beyond the wall.

"Celia!"

Severus turned around—though as quickly as the magic made him move, it was more like reappearing facing another way. He saw three other people jogging out of the clearing to meet the woman. There were no tents, Severus saw. He blinked and stared harder, wondering what sort of crazy Muggles he'd stumbled on.

Then he realized there were faint, misty shapes in the air, which suggested houses covered with a Disillusionment Charm. He'd stumbled onto wizards.

Why would wizards be living in the middle of a forest, and looking like that?

The woman, whose name seemed to be Celia, laughed and held out her arms to the first person who came to meet her. He was a young man with dark hair and brilliant blue eyes, and he waved a wand that removed the dirt and the twigs and the grass stains efficiently from Celia. The bite scars stayed, Severus noticed; they must have belonged to a much older wound.

"How was it?" asked the man, grinning.

"Harder than I thought it would be," Celia admitted, and turned so that his wand could wave over the twigs clinging to her hair. "For one thing, whatever our exalted leader says, it's not natural to go a week without a bath."

The man rolled his eyes, while the tall woman behind him, who had streaks of grey in her hair and bright black eyes, laughed. "He says that it's necessary to 'embrace our lupine nature' and 'learn to control ourselves when the change comes,'" she said, altering her voice to a timbre that Severus almost recognized. "Of course, he would. He's been more successful than any of us at it." She brushed her hair away from her neck, and Severus saw the same sorts of white scars there that decorated Celia's arm.

That, combined with her comment about "lupine nature," made Severus shiver. They're a werewolf pack. They must be.

He thought about willing himself away from there. On the other hand, none of them could see him, either; he was standing right beside Celia, and no one had said anything yet. And they could hardly hurt him when his body was immaterial and any bite would go through him. Besides, Severus didn't think it was the full moon yet.

And he was interested, more interested than he had been in anything in a long time.

"You're always agreeing with him, Leila." Celia looked at her from beneath a strand of hair as the man charmed the last of the twigs out of it. "I find it tiresome."

"At least I'm here to argue with him," said the third person, who had been standing behind the man and whom Severus had failed to pay much attention to until now. She was another woman, though small and slim enough she might have passed for a teenage boy from a distance. Her hair was red like a Weasley's, but she had no freckles. Severus was relieved. There was only so much of an assault that his eyes could stand. "So you can give thanks for that."

"Maybe she shouldn't," the man murmured idly, though the tension in his shoulders as he stepped back from Celia told Severus it wasn't idle at all. "How many people have you nearly eaten now?"

The small woman moved forwards, bristling. Her red hair seemed to stand on end, and she was actually showing her teeth. The man fell into a defensive crouch, his wand weaving back and forth in front of him. Celia looked torn between amused and alarmed. Leila folded her arms and rolled her eyes.

"Enough." The authoritative voice spoke from a house that Severus thought stood farther away from the others, though he hadn't paid much attention to those arrangements yet, enthralled as he was with watching the people. "Josh, you should know better than to tease Hyacinth. Her wolf is stronger than the rest of ours, that's all."

"Except yours," said Josh, looking grateful for an excuse to put his wand away. Hyacinth relaxed and let her lips drop back over her teeth.

"The harder the struggle, the worthier the victory." The voice sounded as if it were quoting something.

Severus turned around, finally, to look at the man who could make angry werewolves calm down, and found himself staring at Harry Potter.

Potter leaned against the invisible house behind him, one heel cocked to rest on the wall, his arms folded like Leila's, his green eyes wary and brilliant at the same time. There was no doubt it was him; the shaggy hair still slid apart to show the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. But he had changed, and Severus didn't think the slightly ragged clothing or the scarred bite visible on his right shoulder were the biggest parts of it.

He carried an aura of power with him now. Severus couldn't feel anything in his spiritual state, and yet this reached out to him and crackled around him the way it seemed to crackle around Potter's fellow werewolves. It was a soothing lightning, if such a thing existed. It threatened greater strength than any Severus could command and promised protection. If he would only yield, then he could lean on that strength and be comforted and sheltered for the rest of his life.

It was so long since Severus had felt anything like it that he found himself staring, enchanted.

Potter looked past his pack, and his eyes abruptly fastened on Severus. He started forwards with an exclamation, his hand stretched out. "Snape?"

Severus panicked. No one was supposed to be able to see him when he was traveling like this. He had been in more than one situation where it would be dangerous to be discovered, but this would be the most dangerous of all.

The other werewolves were swinging around to look at him now, their confused voices making a chorus that haunted Severus. If someone discovered what had happened to him—if they mocked him because he hadn't been strong enough to escape from Tobias—

He leaped without thinking, and snapped back into his body. At once the burning along his veins twined around him like loops of strangling rope, and he screamed.

"A better reaction than I've had for some time," Tobias said, sounding pleased. His hand stroked down Severus's back and pressed firmly in the middle of his spine, as if he thought that he could urge further cries out of him that way. "Yes. Do scream, Severus. A purging of pain is necessary to rid you of the disease, and, alas, the only way to purge pain is to suffer it."

It was too much. He hadn't been braced to endure the agony, since he hadn't felt anything until this very moment. Severus buried his head in his arms and wept, while Tobias stroked his back and his hair and murmured soothing nonsense words.

His father's wand was always ready with a Rennervate whenever Severus passed out.

Later, when he was lying in the soft bed that Tobias sometimes gave him after he had tortured him and wincing as lingering jolts of shock and pain ran through his muscles, Severus found his mind returning to what he had seen of Potter's little werewolf pack.

It was impossible that Potter could have seen him simply because he was a werewolf. The others hadn't been able to, if their yelps of confusion were any indication. And Severus had been around people before in his spiritual travels, though not by choice, including people who had known him much more intimately than Potter. None of them had betrayed the slightest awareness of his presence.

If they had, Severus thought, curling up into a position that left his head buried in his arms but his legs stretched out, then I wouldn't have spent so much time cooped up in this house with a madman.

His heart leaped with wonder then, and he paused and swallowed, wondering if he dared reveal his situation to Potter and ask for help—

But he rejected the notion in the next instant. Potter had made it all too clear during their schooldays that he would love to see pain inflicted on Severus of exactly the kind that Tobias was inflicting. He had always treated the boy, back when he was a boy, with nothing but spite. Why would he spare any effort to rescue him now?

Severus wanted the pain to end, but if it had to continue, then he would prefer to deal with it himself. He didn't want the memory of mockery to ring in his ears.

And the pain would never end.

Despair rose above him and came down as a great black crashing wave, burying him fathoms deep in silence and darkness.

Your mind doesn't make any sense.

It didn't make any sense for him to have returned to the forest to observe Potter's little werewolf camp, Severus acknowledged to himself. He had every reason to stay far away. Fear of mockery, fear of what else Potter might be able to do to him if he could see Severuz, fear of encountering savagery and bloodlust instead of the peace he needed to see on these journeys, fear of Potter enlisting other people who might able to sense him—because if one could, maybe others could—in the hunt for Severus…

All of them boil down to fear.

Severus shrugged. It had been months since his existence had consisted of anything else.

He wondered for a moment if he was going mad, because this was the most irrational thing he had done since Tobias had imprisoned him. But he rejected the thought, shouted at it and broke it over his knee. Tobias had encouraged Severus to distrust his own perceptions from the first day he tortured him, told him that he was sick and shouldn't fight the pain because it was meant to help him. He hadn't forced Severus down that road so far. Severus would not travel it on his own.

So he stood behind the trees, because if Potter could see his spirit form there was at least no indication that he could see Severus through solid objects, and watched the werewolf pack going about their day.

Josh, the only man in the pack besides Potter, was practicing what seemed to be meditation, crouching on a woven grass mat with his eyes closed and breathing slowly. Celia, the woman Severus had followed through the forest the other day, was reading a book which she moved her lips over; Severus had sneaked as close as he dared, but still couldn't see the title. Leila, who apparently agreed with everything Potter said—as if he could make a home in the wilderness without at least one of his little sycophants around—hummed under her breath as she brewed a potion that had the smell and consistency of Wolfbane. An impromptu lab had been set up under the trees at the very edge of the clearing, and Severus, after watching Leila for a time, had to admit she was clever in substituting some forest-given ingredients for rarer ones she was obviously missing.

Potter sat in the shade of a flowering bush not far from one of the disguised houses and talked softly to the woman named Hyacinth.

Severus sneered at that at first. Of course everyone else in the pack would be busy and devoted to their tasks, while Potter did what he could to avoid work. And Hyacinth didn't look as if she particularly welcomed the conversation. She stared over Potter's head into the forest, her eyes slitted and her breath moving in rasping huffs over her bared teeth. Potter was probably just talking to hear the sound of his own voice.

But when he had spent a few hours watching them, Severus noticed something else. Another half-hour, and he had to admit it existed, against all his inclinations and all his prior knowledge of Potter.

Hyacinth had started out with her teeth bared and her expression uninterested. But slowly, she uncoiled and turned her head towards Potter like a sunflower tracking the sun. By now she was lying with her hands folded underneath her chin like a wolf with its head on its paws and watching him with a dull wonder. Before, Severus would have said that she was on the verge of snapping and running like the wild thing she was into the trees; now she seemed calmer and more human.

Celia regularly glanced up from her book at Potter. Josh turned in his meditation so that he could face him. Leila would finish a stage of the Wolfsbane, shake her head, take a satisfied breath, and then look so that she could catch a glimpse of him over her shoulder.

Potter was the center of his little pack's existence, as thoroughly as the sun was the center of the solar system.

Severus curled his lip. He laughed—under his breath, because he wasn't sure how much of his speech Potter could hear. He pictured Potter lounging under the adoration of the pack like a spoiled prince, every now and then showing his scar so that he could produce excited little squeals.

But the effort to make himself despise Potter for ruling the lives of his companions didn't work, because Severus could feel the effect of that strength.

His father had taught him to worship power, and however much Severus rejected the later manifestations of that attitude, he remembered it as something comforting in childhood. If one of his friends injured him or argued with him, he could rest secure in the knowledge that the right master would do something about it. Tobias was a man others cowered before. Severus remembered several times standing tall and proud at his side and seeing someone else slink away with lowered eyes.

It wasn't comfortable to have that same strength wielding a whip over you or causing fungus to grow through your skin, of course. But when you could lean on it, shelter within it…

And Potter's strength was a palpable aura around him, and his packmates obviously reveled in it.

Finally, Potter stood, with Hyacinth lying at his feet and drowsing in the sunlight. Josh and Celia turned around immediately. Leila took a bit longer, involved as she was in the potion, but she finally glanced up, and then whipped around as if she'd committed some offense in not responding to Potter at once.

Potter nodded and started speaking. His eyes moved constantly from face to face, but that didn't give Severus an impression of nervousness; instead, he seemed to be checking for any sign that his people didn't understand his words. Severus stirred unhappily. That was the kind of leader he'd thought the Dark Lord was, once. It still hurt to remember how wrong he'd been.

Enough of pain. Enough of fear. I'm here to observe something that doesn't concern me and forget for a little while. So Severus did his best to pay attention to Potter's words. They were loud enough, God knew. Potter hadn't lost his liking for making speeches.

"Tomorrow's the full moon. We'll have the potion, but remember: this isn't about subduing the wolf. If we wrestle with it, it's angry and becomes harder to control later, and we're condemning ourselves to a life of needless guilt, because it can't be banished completely. I knew someone whose entire life was a misery because he decided that he was a monster, even when he didn't hurt people, simply because the wolf existed." Potter's eyes grew distant for a moment.

Lupin, Severus thought, remembering the Marauder. Yes, he looked like someone who hated his life and probably felt needlessly guilty.

"It isn't about giving in to the wolf, either," Potter continued, apparently because his daily quota of looking Pale and Stern and Noble hadn't been fulfilled yet. "The ones who do that become true monsters, like Fenrir Greyback." His right hand made an aborted little movement that rendered Severus dead certain Greyback had been the cause of Potter's own bite. "No, we have to pursue the middle course, and be both human and wolf at once. That's the reason I've had you living 'wild' in the forest, the way that some of you have complained about." He looked directly at Celia.

"It's the living without a bath that I object to," Celia muttered, pushing strands of tawny hair away from her face and frowning at Potter.

Potter smiled. "I know it takes some time to get used to," he said. "But the last time I transformed, I did it with the potion in my body and my mind calmed and soothed by having listened to some of the wolf's impulses. It's a delicate balancing act, but it's the kind we have to perform if we don't want to lose our minds."

"I don't want to lose mine," Hyacinth said, lifting her head and shaking herself off as if she'd been immersed in water. "I just don't believe that this is going to work. And if I don't believe it will work, then it won't." Her voice was full of gloomy satisfaction.

Potter dropped to a crouch in front of her and tucked his hands under her chin. "Don't give up," he whispered. His voice was low, but intense enough that the hair on the back of Severus's neck stood up. "And it's not a simple matter of belief. Nothing's simple anymore, now that we've got the wolves inside us. If you fight—and I know you're a fighter, Hyacinth—then you can achieve that balance."

The pack became still, staring at Potter, who seemed to be sending out invisible ripples of confidence. Severus sneered. To be that dependent on one person would make me ill.

But he could see the temptation of it. If there was someone who was counseling him to hold on to his sanity while Tobias tortured him, because someday he would come and pull Severus out of the Manor…

Severus shredded the fantasy. Start thinking like that and he would go mad whether he wanted to or not.

Potter stood up when Hyacinth lowered her head and glanced from one member of the pack to another. He acted as if he could see each of their souls when he looked into their eyes. Severus knew he really couldn't, but he had to admit, grudgingly, that it was a good act.

"We are going to dance with our wolves," Potter said. "And we are going to lead the dance, not stumble hopelessly through it."

Everyone nodded as if hypnotized. Severus snorted.

Potter immediately took a step forwards, his head cocked. Severus froze again, but it wasn't enough, because Potter gave a single deep sniff and then said, in a voice that had descended several levels, "Snape, why don't you come out of hiding? I know you're there."

Terrified, Severus snapped himself back to his body again. At least what Tobias was doing to him was an evil he understood.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

That morning, it was rats.

Severus didn't even bother trying to stay in his skin. He fled into the astral world as soon as Tobias brought the first cage into the room.

There had been signs of madness long before Tobias had actually begun to torture him, Severus thought, as he hovered in the middle of the purple mist and examined a few of the nearer stars, which acquired extra points when he did so. His father had always been prone to sharp stares and odd remarks. He had laughed when one of the first Slicing Spells Severus practiced cut a snake in half, and refused to have the house-elves remove it or kill it himself, instead intent on showing Severus how it could writhe and snap futilely at the air as it died.

But without the eventual torture, Severus had to admit, none of those small signs would have meant anything to him.

Instead, Tobias had begun to go downhill as soon as the Dark Lord was defeated. His mother got sick and they both stayed home to care for her. Tobias had taken to staying in his library and reading Dark Arts books more and more often. His mother, her arm around Severus's shoulders, had whispered that it was his father's means of coping with his loss of power and money and Severus was to leave him alone while he studied.

Severus had. He mourned the loss of his own pride and self-respect, with some still calling him a death eater and his own father thinking that he had been one. He thought he understood him.

Then he had trudged into the dining room for another cheerless meal one night and seen fleshy wires strung above the table. Severus had halted and blinked at them, and at the red chunks of meat dangling from them, not understanding.

"Do you like it?" Tobias asked behind him, voice regretful. "When I learned that your mother was sick, I knew the only cure was to hang her by her own nerves and tendons from the ceiling."

Severus shuddered and closed his eyes tightly. He could never forgive the self of his memory for standing there like an oaf, staring up at the ceiling and opening and closing his mouth as if he would find some answer in himself to what Tobias had done.

Maybe he could have got out of the house, if he ran swiftly enough. Maybe he could have snatched his broom and flown, and when he crossed the wards that warned of a break in the Aurors would have responded to the alarm, Severus could have told them about Tobias. They would have believed him even before they saw the ruin of Eileen's body. They were always willing to believe any evil of a Snape.

Instead, Severus had stood there and let Tobias take his arm and whisper into his ear, "You're sick, too. You're tainted by Dark magic. But don't worry. Your cure will be less drastic than hers. I just have to find it."

Dark magic, indeed, Severus thought, closing his eyes and flipping his spiritual body around in the air, for the sheer fun of doing something he would never be able to do again with his physical body. As if I'd ever touch the stuff again. It was Dark magic that unbalanced his mind in the first place. Had to be.

It was easy for Tobias to fool the Aurors when they came to deliver his pardon for being a spy in the war. They weren't interested enough in the fate of the Snapes to look too closely. Tobias created a convincing illusion of his wife that moved up and down stairs, sat at the table, and stared haughtily. As for Severus, he was present in his own body, with the glamour of clothes on him—Tobias said that being actually clothed would delay his "healing"—and his usual scowl plastered on his face. Tobias, meanwhile, did most of the talking, glittering and witty and putting the Aurors at their ease. His wand spun lightly beneath his fingers under the table, giving great jolts to the glamoured collar that Severus wore about his neck at those times and which would kill him if he attempted to speak a word out of turn.

Just because Tobias had gone mad did not mean he had gone stupid. More was the pity, as Severus would have had some chance at escape if he had.

No help to be found in the Aurors. No help to be found anywhere, since it was not as though Severus would be able to alert anyone when he traveled in a body that was invisible to everyone.

Severus opened his eyes again, and watched the stars change as he flipped heels over head and head over heels.

You know there is one person who can see you, or at least sense you. Harry Potter.

Severus began to shiver and couldn't stop.

Potter was a werewolf, and Severus knew the change made people into Dark creatures. Potter hadn't sounded like one, but that didn't mean he wasn't one. And Severus had never been able to trust a Potter. Why should he assume that he could now? If Potter heard his story, and laughed at him, and left him there…

Severus knew he would then be even further down the road to madness than he had been before.

Still, there was one thing Potter might be able to do for him. Severus needed some amusement and diversion when he was away from home and traveling. Someone who could see him, and might be willing to talk to him, would be both.

Potter had his own secrets to hide, that was certain. Severus occasionally heard bits and scraps of news from the Aurors, though not much. Surely one of them would have mentioned if their hero had been bitten by a werewolf and exiled from the wizarding world. It would be exactly the sort of gossip that most of the public would relish while pretending to be sorry about.

Severus needed to be in a position of power in relation to someone. Taunting Potter with the revelation of his secrets would assure that.

Severus turned and dived towards the forest where he had seen Potter again, making sure this time to imagine garments clinging to his usually naked spiritual body. Powerful people did not appear naked outside their private rooms.

The werewolves' clearing boiled with a restlessness that made Severus think he was standing in the middle of a kettle. This time, he could feel the aura of strength and lightning from every member of the pack, not just Potter.

Which he was glad of, because it gave him something entertaining to watch. Potter was nowhere in sight at the moment.

Celia and Josh were wrestling in the center of the clearing, grasping one another's arms and necks, throwing one another from their feet, dodging clumsy grabs and taunting each other. Severus winced as he heard the fleshy thump with which their bodies hit the ground. Of course, they were both werewolves and had supernatural strength, especially this close to the full moon.

Leila was sitting in the door of one of the houses, frowning at a book that looked like it might be the same one Celia had been reading yesterday. Severus dared to come closer this time since no one was present who could see him, and raised his eyebrows at the title. "Discovering Inner Strength."

That doesn't sound like something any of them need to do, he thought, glancing over his shoulder again in the direction of Celia and Josh.

He understood the book's title better when he saw Hyacinth lying in the shade of the flowering bush where Potter had spoken to her yesterday. She was panting, her sides rising and falling, and there was a dark flush to her skin that made her look as if she was sick. Severus crouched next to her and stared at her tightly shut eyes.

She made soft little sounds which he took for part of the panting at first, and then realized were muted growls.

Potter said something about her wolf being stronger than the rest of theirs, Severus remembered. I suppose she takes the full moon harder than they do.

Even as he watched, Hyacinth flowed to her feet—Severus started back reflexively, even though she simply passed through him as if he were a ghost—and turned to look at the forest. Severus looked with her, but saw nothing. Hyacinth growled again and turned three times in a circle, flinging herself down like a dog. Her eyes, which had a distinct golden glaze to them, stared over Severus's head into the distance.

"Snape. Mind telling me why you're here?"

Severus swallowed. Potter had come up behind him. He slowly redirected himself so that he was looking towards Potter, helped by the way that Hyacinth's gaze was steadily pointed in the right direction. It was obvious what she'd been waiting for now.

Potter leaned against a tree, cloaked in an aura like a storm. His arms were folded, his face remote and stern, and his eyes golden-green like grass striped with sunlight. Oddly enough, Severus found himself taking heart from the posture and the stare. It was so exactly like the way he had expected Potter to look.

"I was in the area and thought I would take a stroll," he answered, shrugging his shoulders in a dignified way. Potter narrowed his eyes and took a deep and deliberate sniff. The rest of the pack was drawing in now, glancing from Potter to the patch of air that contained Severus. Severus waited gleefully for questions about Potter's sanity to begin. It would be nice to have some company.

But it seemed the pack trusted their leader too much to ask those kinds of questions. Celia did murmur, "Someone's there we can't see."

"Yes," Potter said. He spoke softly and reassuringly, though he still kept his gaze on Severus as though measuring him up as a threat. "I can see him, though, and smell him, and hear him. He's an old professor of mine, Severus Snape, who went off the grid after the war." He cocked his head, and Severus was reminded of nothing so much as a dog about to scratch its ears. "This is your way of evading the public and exploring all the places that you won't get to see while you're in hiding, then."

It was a ready-made excuse, and Severus seized it gratefully. He shrugged and tried to look as bored as he was pretending to be. "Got it in one, Potter. Now. Mind telling me how it is that you can sense me when no one else could before?"

Potter smiled slightly, despite the chorus of growls from behind him and Leila's mutter about how he didn't have to converse with someone who was avoiding talking with anyone else. "The werewolf's power is a power of the body," he answered. "It changes the body, it sharpens the senses, it turns our eyes a different color. Some people think it corrupts the soul, too, but I don't agree with them—as you've probably noticed if you've listened to my words in any detail." He shrugged. "I've already noticed that I can sense things I never could before. I can smell a scent of lingering love around abandoned houses that people cared greatly for, for example. I can sense faded ghosts who have mostly moved on to the afterlife. And I can sense you." His nostrils fluttered again, as if he were trying to memorize Severus's scent so that Severus could never take him by surprise again.

"Then why can't your happy band of faithful followers see me?" Severus tossed his head at the other werewolves.

"They haven't been as calm and as centered as I have been for long enough." Potter ran a hand through his hair. "Most werewolves, who try to deny what they are, never pay enough attention to the wolf's senses, and the ones who give in completely exist in a world of madness where one perception is pretty much the same as another. They might be able to see you, but they wouldn't know what they were looking at." He gave Severus a narrow smile. "Those words only apply to the human form, by the way. They'll all be able to see you when they shift."

Severus gave a small shudder and silent thanks that he had never come across a pack of werewolves while he was traveling like this. Then he reminded himself that that was ridiculous. It wasn't as though they'd be able to hurt him even if they could all see him.

"So, Potter," he said. "How did you get bitten? Why are you living here with this ragtag band? It sounds as though it's a secret you don't want many people to know. What will you pay me not to reveal it?" Severus was enjoying himself hugely. Power surged through his veins in the way that, back in his body, the rats would be surging across his stomach.

Potter gave him a sharp smile in answer. Severus told himself that Potter's teeth hadn't really lengthened; that was vampires. "How are you traveling, Snape?" he asked. "It sounds as though a few Aurors would pay a lot of money to know that you're evading questioning and maybe spying on the inner workings of the Ministry."

Severus panicked. If Potter told the Aurors, then it was certain word would get back to his father, and then his one escape would be taken away from him, and he really would die under Tobias's torments the way he had started to think he would.

Potter shook his head, eyes locked on Severus's face. "You don't need to worry," he said. "I won't betray your secret, as long as you tell me what it is, if you don't betray mine. And you'll receive my story in return."

"Not wise," Hyacinth said, in a tone on the edge of a snarl.

It was stunning to see how quickly Potter's face changed to a mask of tenderness at the sound of her voice. He turned and dropped to his knees beside Hyacinth, running his hands down her neck. "What is it?" he murmured. "Do you sense that it wouldn't be wise for us to trust him? What do you smell?"

Hyacinth raised her head, eyes slitted and glazed. They locked on him, and Severus jumped. For just a moment, he was sure, she saw him, and he was equally sure that what looked out of her eyes at him was not human.

"No sense," Hyacinth whispered. "But a smell of blood, and death, and pain." She turned away, whimpering, and tucked her head into her flank with a fluidity that half-convinced Severus she had already started to change. Potter spent a moment caressing her hair, his face bright with sorrow and determination both.

"One day," he whispered to her, "a wolf of that strength will be a blessing. You'll see." Then he rose to his feet and turned to Severus.

"A short trade," he said. "The full moon is tonight, and I need to spend time with my people. But I want your promise that you won't betray us. I give you my word that I'll promise if you will."

Severus felt himself relax, at least as much as he could when he didn't have any solid muscles to uncoil. He nodded. "I never knew I had this ability," he said. "I got bored one day, and wished so fervently to be away from our Manor that it just—happened. I can't touch anything while I'm out here, only see and listen, so I can promise that I won't hurt your pack."

Potter considered him with glittering eyes for a long moment. Then he jerked his head down in a sharp nod and said, "And Fenrir Greyback bit me. The wizarding world would have gone mad if they knew. I didn't feel like either being their martyr or a political test case. I wanted to balance with the wolf instead, studied how to do that, and decided that living in a wild environment would be best for now. Someday, when the rest of the pack and I have sufficient control, we'll go back into the wizarding world. But we can't for right now."

He jerked his head again. "I promise not to reveal your secret. Now, go. Come back tonight if you want to see what we can achieve."

So authoritative was his voice that Severus found himself jumping back into the astral world before he could reconsider. He hovered there, blinking, and licking his lips despite the fact that he couldn't feel the touch of his tongue.

Someone can see me. He won't betray me. It might be entertaining to watch a werewolf pack change. At least, it's something I haven't seen before.

And new things were of much value in the life he was living now.

Since he would probably lose track of time if he went back into the Manor—and Tobias had spoken about using iron as well as rats today—Severus chose a place "not far from the forest" to pass the time until night. That meant he spent the remaining hours of daylight staring at an unutterably boring town of Muggles, all of whom seemed to be engaged in frowning at boxes and taking paper out of boxes and listening to boxes and talking into boxes. Some of them shivered when he passed through the offices, and once a small box exploded. Delighted, Severus tried to make that happen again, but couldn't. Maybe it was only a coincidence and not the Muggle devices responding to the magic of his astral form after all.

Obediently, he reappeared in the clearing that held the pack when the full moon was on the verge of rising. He shivered as he stared around, even though he couldn't feel the cold—and it wouldn't really be cold anyway, since it was June. The restlessness he had picked up from the werewolves earlier was now snapping, surging, soaring. Severus rubbed briskly at his intangible arms and had to resist the temptation to rush out of the clearing into the forest.

You've come from a place that's even more dangerous, he reminded himself. And once Potter gives a promise, he keeps it. He's a Gryffindor, they can't help themselves. You don't need to think he'll betray you.

The feeling went on boiling around him, but for long moments, he couldn't see any of Potter's pack. He kept turning in different directions, though, as though someone was staring at him.

And then, one by one, they began to emerge from their houses.

Hyacinth came first, already walking on all fours. She tilted her head back and shuddered as Severus watched. The next moment, she was twisting on the ground, her bones reshaping themselves, her skin growing a thick rusty pelt that couldn't hide the sheer muscle of her. Severus listened to her howls of pain and wondered how in the world Potter could fool himself. No balance with the wolf was ever going to come out of that.

Celia and Josh both became tawny wolves, Josh with streaks of black on his muzzle and legs. Celia sneezed and jumped on Josh, wrestling with him, only cocking one eye and one ear at Severus before she did. Severus smiled cautiously. It seemed that Potter's program had worked with those two, at least.

Leila was a black bitch with neat silver tips to her tail and ears, who sat in the doorway of her house and waved her tail lazily, watching the younger wolves with a knowing air that Severus found annoying. She spent some time staring at him, then snorted and looked away. Severus resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her.

Potter emerged last.

Severus stared despite himself. He had never thought a werewolf could be beautiful; he had always feared them as horrible monsters, and that was the last place you looked for something aesthetically pleasing. But Potter was a wolf with a body as dark as his hair, his black fur trailing off into warm brown on his legs, to almost a honey color on his paws. A single white line ran down the middle of his spine, and a ragged white mark on his forehead showed where the lightning bolt scar would be when he was human. He looked around at the pack, nodded to Severus, and then loped towards the other wolves.

Only when he was near Celia did Severus realize that Potter was alsobig. He didn't look like it, because his muscles moved as smoothly as oil and he projected an air of quiet confidence, with power muted beneath it, as though he didn't need to command. But his shoulder would at least reach Severus's, at six feet high, and that air of relaxation made him seem larger still.

Celia and Josh stopped wrestling when they saw him and stepped forwards to rub their noses against his jaw, whining. Potter turned his head, and Leila joined them at a trot, tongue lolling as she nipped at Potter's tail. Potter tilted his head, and Leila lay down as if scolded.

Hyacinth joined them last. Severus cowered reflexively when he saw her. Her color had deepened to the scarlet of freshly spilled blood, her eyes were only a few shades lighter, and Potter overtopped her by an inch or less. If Potter was not here, Severus could see, she would have been the leader of the pack, no question.

If she could have gathered them.

Because Hyacinth was a lone wolf, someone who would have become a monster like Fenrir Greyback. Severus could see that, too. Even with the Wolfsbane he was sure she had taken, or she would have been running mad through the forest, she was alternately panting and snapping, her wildness straining at its bonds.

Potter turned and glanced at her. For long moments, their eyes held. A throbbing growl that reminded Severus of Muggle engines worked its way up Hyacinth's throat. She started to crouch, and the rest of the pack backed away in anticipation.

Potter didn't crouch. He returned her stare boldly, instead, his body alert and his eyes curious. He didn't look as though backing down or glancing away was an option.

Hyacinth's growl stilled at last. She lowered her head and bowed over her extended forelegs instead, the way Severus had seen Crups do when they wanted to play. Potter leaned over and nipped her softly on the ear.

Then he tilted back his head and howled.

A chorus of howls answered him at once, an undulating wail of voices that rose up as if they would chase and bring down the stars. Severus could almost feel his pulse jumping and his throat drying out. He would have Apparated spontaneously at the sound of that if he was here in the flesh.

As it was, he had nothing to fear, and the sounds were rather thrilling than otherwise.

Potter sprang ahead into the forest. Hyacinth was a stride behind him. Celia and Josh went flying in their wake like leaves, and Leila managed a respectable sprint at the back.

And Severus, because his astral projection was willing himself to be in certain places rather than walking, could keep up.

He flashed from tree to tree, and always, somehow, Potter had got ahead. He was panting as he ran, his eyes gold with exhilaration, his feet flying so fast that Severus could see whirlwinds of dirt spinning up behind them. Those werewolf muscles worked for him, whether he was circling trees at a pace that made Severus dizzy or crouching to leap over a deadfall. Severus appeared next to an ancient oak and caught a perfect image of Potter in mid-jump, his forelegs thrown forwards, his hind legs extended back, his head up and his muzzle open to howl again in the sheer exaltation of the thing.

Trust Potter to find some way of flying even in this form, Severus thought.

The pack spread out as they traveled through the forest, communicating by tiny yelps and growls. Hyacinth ran ahead of Potter, and then she gave a belling call like a hound that Severus felt sure had some specific meaning. These were werewolves and not ordinary wolves, after all, and they weren't limited to calls prescribed by instinct.

Potter howled in response, and then came the three voices that Severus hadn't learned to distinguish yet. He had no interest in trying, either. He kept up with Potter instead, watching in rapt silence as the great black head swept down for a scent and then the powerful body tensed and skimmed through the trees.

Suddenly, something sprang out ahead with a noise of cracking branches that was like thunder to Severus. He started.

A deer.

Potter and his pack were coursing a hind who dodged madly to avoid them, who jumped small rivers and flitted like a shadow over the underbrush, who showed them a clean pair of heels so many times that Severus was sure she would get away. The werewolves had a lot of strength, but they weren't tireless, and they'd already run for almost an hour by the time they found their prey; the moon was fully up.

But it didn't seem to matter. On and on they piled, howls linking them, their panting breaths slicing through the silences in between howls, rejoicing in their strength. Severus lost himself in the sheer smoothness of their movement, or rather of Potter's movement, because Potter was the one he accompanied and couldn't tear himself away from. Now and then, he swore he could feel a prickling of tears at his eyes.

The hind turned at last in a small bay of rocks, foaming and snorting in her terror. Her legs shook until she almost lay down, but she forced herself backwards, and the rocks sheltered her flanks and sides from attack. The werewolves could only come at her from the front, and that was too narrow for them to force their shoulders through.

Severus glanced at Potter as he came to a whooshing, whuffling stop, and the rest of the pack piled up behind him. Potter studied the hind with intelligent eyes, but didn't seem overly concerned. Severus raised one brow. Really? And how are you going to get out of this one?

Then the hill above the hind which held the rock bay trembled, and Hyacinth came springing from above to fall on her back.

The hind, incredibly, managed to leap one final time, surging over Potter's head and making a bid for freedom. Hyacinth's attack didn't crush her spine the way it was probably meant to. Instead, Hyacinth landed behind her and snapped twice at her heels instead. The hind screamed and stumbled. Hamstrings severed, Severus thought, so caught up in what he was watching that he felt almost nothing. I forgot, somehow, that wolves are pack hunters.

Potter jumped before the hind had come fully down from her magnificent leap, and met her four feet above the ground, his body dwarfing hers. His jaw clenched on her throat, and he tore his head sideways. Blood drenched his black fur, and the ground, and the faces of Celia and Leila, coming eagerly up behind him.

But the image that remained in Severus's mind then, and forever after, was that of two dark shapes, one slender, one bulky, the bulky one clasping the neck of the slender one as they hung motionless against the moon.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Look in the mirror, Severus. The cure has progressed. Soon you will feel much better than you do now."

Tobias's hands were on his shoulders. Tobias's breath was in his ear. Severus shuddered with an instinctive revulsion, wishing he could flee from his body as he did under the physical torture, but Tobias would surely notice it now, as he didn't when he was preoccupied with his tools. His father's noticing his distance from the process of "curing" him was a step closer to his father discovering the truth.

Severus could not endure it if that happened, and to endure was harder than to live.

He lifted his head and gazed into the mirror at the ruin of his body that Tobias considered "progress."

He was so emaciated that Severus knew he would have fallen over if Tobias hadn't supported him. His skin was translucent in places, clearly showing the maze of running blue veins and the marks of sores and weals and scars and burns that Tobias had inflicted on him. And bites, from the rats three days ago, though Severus forced himself to look at those more objectively. His vision had trembled at the edges when he focused on them for too long, which was a sure sign that his astral projection was preparing to happen in spite of all the control he could exercise over it.

His shoulder blades stuck out of his body like broken bats' wings. His teeth were the most prominent part of his face. His ears lacked the lobes, his hair grew sparse, and his jaw trembled and hung loose constantly, no matter how often Severus tried to clamp it shut.

Severus gazed at himself as steadfastly as he could, privately glad that he could change his appearance to whatever he wanted when he was in astral form. Otherwise, though he might have got pity from people like Potter and his pack, it was very hard to imagine that they would ever take him seriously.

"So good," Tobias whispered to him, and stroked down one of Severus's legs, which was so thin that it looked like a chicken bone to Severus. There was a streak of dried blood on his knee. He looked at that instead of his father's healthy hand touching his skin. Severus's hands bore the swollen joints of repeatedly broken fingers.

And Tobias would have done worse if I defied him.

Tobias stood back upright, and caught Severus's eye, and smiled. The thickness of Dark magic crackled in the air around him, smelling like rotted fruit mixed with rotten meat, and Severus closed his eyes in pain and exhaustion and dread.

"Not long now," Tobias whispered, as if he were consoling a sulky child. "And then you'll be healthy, and we'll be free of this curse that plagues us."

He helped Severus limp back to his bedroom, murmuring tender words all the while, and then went to fetch the screws that he would drive into Severus's spine. Severus shut his eyes and leaped free.

One cold thought rode with him, like a heavy bolt of glass that was meant to rivet him to his body.

Even if I escaped, would my life be worth living?

The forest glade was a relief after that, even if the only person Severus could see in it was Potter, and even if Potter's eyes fixed on him the moment he arrived, giving Severus none of the pleasure of trying to sneak up on him.

And even if Potter half-rose to his feet with a startled exclamation.

"What's happened to you?"

Severus changed his astral appearance at once. He must have brought along some of the wounds that Tobias had inflicted on him, or perhaps come naked. It was one of the reasons he hated looking into the mirror; it always influenced his perception of the appearance his "body" took the next time he escaped from his prison.

He was especially regretful for this time, since Potter was staring at him with wide and startled eyes. Severus's only comfort was that it couldn't have been as bad as it had looked in reality, or Potter would have laughed and said something about Severus deserving it. No, probably it was only nakedness, to shock him.

Then Severus thought about the hunt he had seen the other night, and wondered whether it was really that easy to shock Potter any longer.

He shrugged off and buried the speculations, because Potter was waiting for him to speak, and he had no way of knowing if what Severus said was the truth or a lie. "Nightmares sometimes affect me that way," Severus said. "And it's easy to have nightmares when you've bowed to the Dark Lord."

He wanted Potter to step back from Severus casual mention of nightmares, eyes bright with respect at the tone. Surely it should make Severus look powerful if he disregarded his own pain. But it seemed that becoming a werewolf hadn't dimmed Potter's sense of self-righteousness, because he stepped closer instead, nostrils wide as if he were focusing those keen bodily senses he had talked about on Severus. "How often do you have the nightmares?" His voice was low.

"Every night," Severus said, curling his lip in disdain as if it were a minor annoyance like clumsy first years. For a moment, he wondered about telling Potter the truth, but what was Potter going to do? He'd said that he wasn't leaving this forest until his pack had all learned control of their wolves, and it wouldn't happen in the next few weeks, which Severus estimated was all the time he had until Tobias killed him. Nor could he tell anyone who would investigate and see the truth. Tobias would simply find some way to cover up and lie his way out of it. And then he would hurt Severus even more because of it. No, Severus was not so stupid as to believe in a rescue.

That truth sank home for the first time. If the sight of his body had been a glass bolt in his spine, this was a lead chain about his chest. Severus closed his eyes.

There was an odd tingle in his left shoulder. Severus looked up in surprise to see Potter withdrawing his hand with an embarrassed look.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I would comfort my people by touching them, but I forgot that I can't do that with you." He stepped back and circled around Severus as if trying to look for the most solid part of him, reminding Severus of nothing so much as a wolf circling a locked barn. "It's no wonder that you use your magic to flee when you can. Is there—" He shook his head harshly. "No, of course there isn't."

"There isn't what?" Severus asked. He kept a sharp eye on the anxious, condescending expression on Potter's face. As long as it didn't grow too strong, then he could put up with it. It was—slightly pleasant to have someone ask questions about him as if they would have liked to aid him.

"There isn't anything I can do to help you," Potter said harshly, and settled back on the ground with a fluid motion that Severus never would have believed if he hadn't seen Potter move far more gracefully in the forest. "If I went back now, everyone would question me about where I'd been, and there would be people who could work out what happened, because my wolf is never far from the surface. I would need to persuade the Minister and the Wizengamot that you should be left alone, and I'm not sure that my voice is politically relevant anymore." He pawed a distressed hand across his forehead, his eyes turning yellow.

Severus bit his lip and stayed quiet. He wanted to say something about how Potter could get around that if he'd ever bothered to learn how to properly wield his political influence, but why should he? Potter would talk some mealy-mouthed moral rubbish about how he couldn't take advantage of his fame, and the situation would say exactly what it was now. Severus couldn't be disappointed because he hadn't expected anything less. Potter had no idea of the truth, and his first loyalty had always been to the people clustered around him—who had never included Severus.

Perhaps Potter could alert his friends, but even if he did, that would mean the Aurors would come clumsily sniffing about, and Tobias would punish Severus more in the end.

"I appreciate the sentiment," he said, because he could say that as an abstract statement and mean it. "I'd rather hear more about the pack and your part in it, to be honest. That's what I'm here for, not discussing my own situation."

Potter watched him with brooding eyes for a few more moments, and then nodded and climbed to his feet. His scar appeared briefly as his head shifted, and Severus started. Usually it was the first thing he stared at, to remind himself that this was Potter he was talking to and orient his mindset accordingly. This time, it hadn't occurred to him to look for it. Potter's aura of strength was a much better reason to stare.

"I understand," Potter said. "And it'll be interesting to tell this story to someone who isn't already part of the pack and doesn't understand it instinctively because of the presence of the wolf moving inside him." He grinned. Severus decided his impression of the other day hadn't been mistaken; Potter's teeth were longer and sharper than they had been when he was human. "When you didn't return after the hunt, I decided that you'd grown disgusted with us."

"No." Severus drifted after Potter and seated himself on the ground, legs folded, when Potter settled down in a crouch outside one of the houses. For a moment, his arse passed through the grass, but he readjusted before Potter could do more than raise an amused eyebrow. Severus lifted his head with assured haughtiness and asked a question that he thought would distract Potter. "When did you become so bloody good at killing?"

"It was bloody, wasn't it?" Potter murmured, misunderstanding the question because he was Potter. He examined his hands for a moment, as if he expected to see silver nails there, before he lifted his gaze to Severus. "When I took the wolf into myself," he answered. "When I decided that I couldn't become absorbed, either by the change itself and the hunger it produces or by the fact that the wolf existed."

Severus folded his arms and nodded to show that he was listening.

"It's hard to describe the wolf," Potter said. "It's not exactly a separate animal, or being, inside me—although it comes close to that for someone like Hyacinth, who has so much strength to control. It's more like—a need. A twitch in the muscles when they're not exercised enough. A taste for the right kind of food that obsesses you more the longer it goes unfulfilled." He smiled, and Severus saw the golden haze brighten and grow strong in his eyes again. "Yes," Potter repeated softly. "A taste for the right kind of food. Exactly like that."

Severus leaned forwards. "I'm surprised that you managed to come to that decision in the first place. I've always heard that werewolves are mindless before the change, before the day of the full moon, and all the restraints in the world won't keep the wolf back when it wants to come out."

Potter snorted. "What causes the mindlessness is the werewolves' attempt to ignore or flee from their fate. The wolf doesn't like being ignored. It'll surge up all the more destructively if one of us tries to pretend that they're just a normal human. It's like that taste I told you about. Ignore it and the food becomes all you can think about."

One of us, Severus thought in wonder. Potter has managed to become one of the monsters, and he seems comfortable being so.

"And sometimes, of course," Potter continued in a soft, grim voice, "you get someone like Fenrir Greyback, who revels in causing damage and pain. He'll invite the mindlessness in and run with it, until the wolf takes over most of the time. It's why he looked like a wolf even when he was in human form—the yellow fingernails and the long teeth." He shook his head and looked away.

"How was he able to bite you?" Severus asked, giving in to his curiosity, though his mother would surely have called it vulgar. "I would have thought the Ministry would keep you locked up like a virgin bride until all the Death Eaters were dealt with."

Potter sighed. "He sent me a note saying that he was ready to surrender, but he would only surrender in my presence and on the night of the full moon. I could bring all the Aurors I liked and all the silver I liked and—and everything else. I went because I was a young, naïve idiot."

Severus was startled into laughing. "It's good to see you recognize that."

Potter turned his head quickly, and Severus recoiled in spite of himself at the sight of those teeth champing together and the eyes focused on him—and maybe the sheer swiftness of the motion, too. Potter's swaying head left afterimages in his vision. "I was," he said. "What I am now is better than that, despite all the pain I've gone through. I know what I am and accept it, and I can protect other people from me and my pack members from dying because of their wolves. That's worth it."

Severus had to look away, because he wasn't sure what Potter would see in his eyes if he kept returning his gaze. "And of course Fenrir managed to slaughter the Aurors that you'd brought along, and evade the weapons."

"Of course," Potter said dryly. "He acted as if he wanted to kill me, too, then ended up biting me. He was howling when he did it, but I'd swear he was laughing." One hand rose to his right shoulder to touch the bite Severus had noticed before. "He ran away after that, and left me to explain myself.

"I concealed that I was bitten from everyone except Ron and Hermione, and told the Ministry that they needed to take Greyback seriously as a threat. They did. Meanwhile, I started studying how to control my wolf."

Potter paused reflectively. "Except for my first change."

Severus raised his eyebrows. "You let yourself have one night of howling in misery and pacing up and down in a small room? I can't imagine that that made your wolf very happy." Of course, given Potter's innate nobility, it was also impossible to imagine him doing anything else.

Potter smiled at him. His eyes were glinting, and his head tilted to the side, and Severus suddenly felt as if Potter were considering the angle he would need to get to Severus's jugular. "No. I made sure that I knew where Greyback was—those senses I told you about are useful for tracking other werewolves, too—and then I warded the forest so that he couldn't get out and neither could I. I made sure I was close to him when I changed." His fingers rose in front of him, clenching, and once again he seemed to be testing the strength of invisible claws.

"I tore the bastard's throat out."

The sound of the growl in the back of his voice would have made Severus's hair rise and his heart beat faster, if it could have. And it did something else. Severus felt himself close his eyes and tilt his head back in sheer reaction.

This was Potter the way Severus had sometimes daydreamed he could be, when he allowed himself to forget about Potter's stupid fucking heroics and focus on the pranks he pulled on Slytherins instead. This was Potter acknowledging the full force of his strength and using it. He was one of the monsters, but he hadn't become like the Dark Lord or Greyback. Still, he tore people's throats out.

Severus knew he would have gone hard if they were in the same room.

"And after that," Potter went on, in a gentler voice, as if he knew that Severus needed time to absorb what he'd just heard, "I started to look out for other werewolves who were still struggling to cope with what they were instead of sinking hopelessly under their burden, or using it as an excuse to run mad. I found Celia, and Josh, and Leila, that way."

Severus opened his eyes and tried to do something else other than to stare at Potter in avid lust. "I know who you're leaving out, having met the pack," he said with some difficulty. Potter shot him a curious look, which suggested he didn't know how he'd affected Severus after all. Severus cleared his throat and hurried on. "How did you find Hyacinth?"

"I heard rumors about her," Potter said, settling back in the grass so that now he was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, like a normal person, rather than on his buttocks, like a wolf. "That she'd been changed and her family was desperately trying to keep her from murdering anyone—and that they'd failed. When I found her, she was near to committing suicide out of despair. I did what I could to protect and help her. It wasn't until I transformed and fought her and won that she started to think I could help her control her wolf, though."

"I understand why," Severus said. "She's incredibly powerful."

Potter nodded, with compassion and pity stirring together like water and mud in his eyes. "If she was a real wolf and born with that amount of strength, she could lead a pack, no question. If she was a human woman, she could be a politician. But werewolves aren't natural creatures, and unless she learns to dance with it like a partner, then there's nowhere for that strength to go." He lifted his head, and Severys saw the same determination that had been in his eyes when he howled at the moon. "There's no place for us. So we're going to create one."

Severus wanted to shiver. He had never imagined that that would be the action he would miss being able to do the most when he was astral, but it seemed that Potter had made it so. "No one but you could do it, Potter."

Potter gave him a quick smile, but shook his head. "No. Someone else couldhave come up with this strategy. I just happen to be the one who did." Severus nodded and said nothing else. If Potter wanted to persist in his little delusion, then Severus wasn't going to contradict him.

"Now." Potter sprawled forwards and settled his elbows on the grass and his chin on his hands. "Why did you stay away for three days after the hunt if you weren't disgusted with us? I thought the timing no coincidence."

Because Tobias hurt me so badly that I spent most of those three days unconscious, and the rest with him watching me too closely, wasn't an answer that Severus could give, given the careful web of lies he'd spun about himself by this point. He shrugged instead. "I got busy. I was slightly less bored. I was able to talk to my father, which isn't always the case; he's always scheming to get me out." Severus was proud of how level his voice remained on those words. He could still lie well. He still had power of a sort.

It's the only power you'll have soon. You should tell Potter the truth and let him do something to help you.

But Severus dismissed the idea. Potter had stated his limitations all too clearly. What could Severus expect him to do? And besides, he thought he should be able to choose how much he revealed and to whom. It would be rare enough that he got to make choices in the rest of his life. If he wanted to die with his mouth shut on the words that would expose him as weak and contemptible to Potter, then he should be able to do that.

"Acceptable," Potter said, tilting his head to the side and watching Severus with wild eyes that wavered between gold and green. "And yet, I think, not quite the whole truth."

Severus shrugged, glad that he couldn't sweat in this form, and that any nervous fidgets he did on reflex were probably absorbed in the general flickering and flashing of his unstable limbs. "If I don't want to retell every boring detail of my closed-in days, Potter, I personally think that you should find that reassuring."

Potter, thankfully, laughed and sat upright again, this time with his legs sprawled around him in a pose that struck somewhere between wolf and human. He tries to incorporate the balance even into his gestures,Severus thought. I can see why the others would find it difficult to imitate him. "You're probably right about that," he said. "Well, I hope you continue to visit. You're the first non-werewolf I've told about this, other than my friends, who would trust me if I told them I needed them to follow me into a giant's lair. And if you took it this well, then maybe the Wizengamot will, too. Someday."

Severus winced. "Potter, I took it this well because I like power, and I don't mind blood," he said. "What you showed me in the hunt was beautiful. I don't think many other people would see it the same way."

Potter winked at him. "Ah, but you grew up with the tales of werewolves as monsters, not to mention almost being killed by one in school, and you still managed to overcome your prejudices. I think that someone who's lived outside the wizarding world, like a Muggleborn, might be more sympathetic."

Severus snorted. "And there's so many of those on the Wizengamot."

"Well, then there might be pure-bloods who think we're beautiful," Potter said with determined optimism. When Severus rolled his eyes, he said at once, in a challenging tone that made Severus understand how a wolf could roll over and show its belly, "Well, what do you think is beautiful about us, then?"

"You're wild," Severus said. "And that's something a human can admire, but it's not the same thing as thinking you're harmless. I know you can't hurt me even if you try. If I were in front of you in the flesh, I'd no doubt feel differently."

Potter sighed and ran his hand down his face. "Yes, perhaps you're right. But I still think we should try, and use as many advantages of both wolf and human as we can to—"

"Get away from him."

Potter sprang up and away from Severus, landing on all fours and growling from deep in his chest. Severus vanished and then reappeared facing the one who had spoken from the woods.

It was Hyacinth, walking on her hands and knees, her eyes fixed on him and her nostrils so wide that Severus could see the red inside them. They were flaring and sniffing, and she seemed uncertain whether she saw or smelled him most keenly. She had a better growl than Potter did.

"I can smell him," she said. "Blood, pain, death-stink. He comes from a place of torture and madness. He hasn't told you everything, leader." She turned her gaze towards Potter, and it grew briefly reverent, but the next moment she was looking back at Severus with no loss of suspicion.

"Snape?" Potter asked.

It was all there in his voice—the old hatred, the old uncertainty as to whether Severus was good or evil, the doubt that he should have shown him any attention because Severus wasn't worth such attention.

He must think that I'm the one torturing people.

Severus leaped without answering. He had only a few weeks left to live. He wasn't about to spend them with people who insisted on turning him into a person he hadn't been—mentally or physically—in years.

Your pride will choke you to death.

Then at least I don't have to swallow it, Severus answered the voice in the back of his mind, and swam away through the astral world.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Of course he went back to Potter's glade.

He didn't mean to. But staying in his body while his father tortured him was no choice at all, and he found observing Muggles, or even wizards, less interesting than it had been when he was sure no one could see him.

Someone could. That person waited in the distance, and probably forgot about him the longer he was absent. Severus pictured Potter involving himself in the affairs of his pack, and his friends if they ever visited, and deciding that Severus was only an aberration in his life, the same way Severus had been for him in Hogwarts.

His pride, battered down by Tobias's wires and bolts and pinching machines, decided, for some reason, that that was the final insult. Before his death, Severus could at least say that he had managed to matter to Harry bloody Potter.

Even if he was the only one who ever knew, because all Potter had to do to conceal the fact was simply not mention to anyone else that he'd talked with Severus.

A memory of Hyacinth and the way she'd sniffed out blood and pain on him made Severus pause for a moment. But then he shrugged and flitted away from the arguing Muggle family he'd been watching in the direction of the pull that led to the forest. All he had to do was wait until Hyacinth left and then present himself to Potter. He was sure he could irritate him easily enough to make him forget what Hyacinth had said, or get him talking of himself, which Potter loved to do. Severus would luxuriate in the sensation of fooling someone else one more time.

"There you are."

For a moment, Severus decided he'd made a mistake after all, even though he'd carefully waited until Potter split his pack and sent them in separate directions to "try to balance their wolf and human sides for an afternoon." Somebody had to have stayed behind. Probably Hyacinth; so far, Severus had not heard Potter speak to anyone else in that careful, coaxing tone.

But when he flickered around the tree and definitively into Potter's sight, he saw that Potter was watching him with those brilliant wild eyes, and moving towards him with a slow step that suggested he was trying to tame a skittish animal, and talking to him in that tone.

Severus stood there, staring. He knew that Potter still couldn't touch him or harm him; if he hadn't managed to do it on the night of the full moon, when the werewolf magic was strongest, then he wouldn't be able to when they were three weeks away from the next time he would transform.

And there was something like sympathy in Potter's look and movements, not the scorn Severus had expected, or the suspicion Potter would have that Severus was the one doing the torturing and murdering. Sympathy was like a rare wine at this point.

So Severus let Potter get within five feet of the limits of his astral body, listening all the time to Potter's flow of amazing, amusing words.

"I know something must be wrong—with you, or around you. I remember the way you looked when you first arrived last time. You were as thin as a werewolf who's tried to starve himself to death, and you had wounds on your legs and arms that looked like the work of rats." Potter licked his lips. "I discounted that when you changed because you clearly had the power to make yourself look like whatever you wanted. But the scent of blood and death Hyacinth told me about proves I shouldn't have. What's happening to you, Severus? Is it the Ministry? I gave them a request through Ron and Hermione for Aurors to investigate your Manor, but they said they'd been there and that everything was fine. So clearly, it's not something it'll do much good to contact them about. Either they're causing it, or they're ignoring it, or they're not seeing it. Which is it? What's happening to you?"

Severus sighed as the crackling aura of strength flowed over him. It was so thick that he could have gone to sleep on it like a pillow. It would be wonderful, he thought, to simply trust in Potter the way his wolves so apparently did and tell him what was happening. Of course Potter still couldn't do anything, because he had given up his political power to hide away in the forest, but it would be soothing to pour out the words.

"Severus." Potter's tone had dipped, a choice that surprised Severus at first, because surely it would make his voice more like a threatening growl. But seemingly that was the right tone to work with the aura of strength, because Severus found his perceptions of Potter as a comforter increasing. "I can help you. I only need a few details. I only need a name. Who is the one doing this to you? You're an innocent victim. I can help you. I only need a name."

"Nice try, Potter." With an effort, Severus pulled himself out of the daze he was falling into and retreated with a small shake of his head. Then he realized that he might as well stand in place, since Potter could hardly grab him and shake the answer out of him, and he raised an eyebrow and clasped his hands behind his back. "But what makes you think that I'd tell you the name now, when I didn't before?"

Potter gave him a smile that would have been gentle, except Severus could see the edge of teeth in it. "So you do admit that something is happening to you."

"Things happen to different people every day," Severus said, mentally cursing himself for the slip. After a moment, thinking back over the different torments that Tobias had subjected him to in the past week, he decided that the slip was forgivable. He was still doing better than most people would have under this kind of pressure; he could cling to his pride. "For example, eating and sleeping and having pointless arguments with their friends. Dying. Being changed into werewolves. You know how it is."

Potter's eyes flared, and Severus flickered backwards despite himself, until he landed behind the tree where he'd stood while he was waiting for the rest of the pack to leave the clearing. He'd forgotten that, of course, no matter how much control Potter had over his wolf, he'd always had a temper, and his being a werewolf would aggravate it.

"Severus, I'm sorry." It was sweet to hear an apology, and to hear someone who wasn't Tobias calling him by his first name. Severus peered around the tree. Potter slunk towards the tree, his head lowered, his eyes on the ground. Severus stared. He hadn't realized that Potter knew what humility meant. "I only want to know more about it. I don't want you to put me off with lies when it's perfectly obvious that you're being hurt. Yes, I would have mocked you when I was in school, but we've both changed since then." Potter took a deep breath, as though he needed to think about his own words for a moment. "Come out and let me help you."

Severus closed his eyes and stood still. A fine trembling was making his astral body flash and alter in front of his gaze, and he didn't want it distracting him while he considered what he should do.

Could this be the help that he had wanted and despaired of finding?

But then the memory of his last conversation with Potter returned to him, and he brutally trod out the hope as he answered, "You told me that you couldn't help. Your political influence is limited, everyone would know you were a werewolf if you left the forest, and asking the Ministry didn't work. Exactly what you do you propose to do?"

There was silence for so long that Severus thought Potter had given up and gone back to sit in the middle of the clearing and wait for his pack to return. It was better that way, Severus told the dizzy tide rushing through his mind. There was absolutely nothing that anyone could do for him. He knew that. He had to start remembering reality more often.

Then Potter stepped around the tree and stood looking at him.

Severus breath caught in a gasp. Potter's eyes were mostly golden now, and he had his teeth bared, and his black hair hung shaggy and unclipped to his shoulders, which Severus hadn't noticed before, probably because Potter's head was in such constant motion. He looked like a beautiful wild beast in the sunlight striping the tree trunks, and Severus was distantly glad that he'd seen a sight like this before he died.

"No one could give me justice after Greyback bit me," Potter said, as if that was an answer to Severus's question. "The Aurors said he was too dangerous to try arresting even on a night when it wasn't the full moon. They sent out hunters for him, but they were too many and too heavily armed, and so of course Greyback always heard they were coming and ran away before they managed to corner him. He slaughtered a few Aurors for the fun of it, and left their corpses as warnings. Most of the Ministry didn't know I was a werewolf, but I pleaded for justice for the people who died next to me that night, and still they couldn't do it." He exhaled, and a growl rode his breath.

"So I did the only thing I knew would satisfy me—and the wolf, which itis important to pay attention to and please. Only you can't indulge all its desires, because that makes you less human." Potter began to pace back and forth, his head swaying restlessly. At the moment, Severus thought he looked less like a wolf than an angry bear.

"I don't see how this has much relevance to my situation, Potter." Severus was grateful that the words came out bored. There were many less complimentary—to himself—tones that they could have taken at the moment, and he no longer trusted his own reactions around Potter.

Potter gave him a single intense look probably intended to shut him up. Severus raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, because it seemed the simpler course. Potter gave a small growl and shook his head, as if he wanted to bite through something. Of course, he had nothing in his mouth.

"I'll get you justice," he said. "It doesn't matter if I have to go around the Ministry to do it. I'm already permanently outside the Ministry. They feel that they don't dare trust any werewolf, no matter how much in control." He stretched, and Severus found it easy to imagine fur cloaking him and claws at the ends of his fingers. "I'll get you justice," he repeated, and there was the sound of ripping flesh in the back of his throat.

"That will go against everything that you told me you were working for," Severus said. His thoughts were wheeling in mindless circles again, and he was barely conscious of the words coming out of his throat, except that they were the arguments he would use against Potter if he truly intended to resist this offer of help. "You wanted to show the Ministry that you could become a good little mingling of human and wolf, obedient to all the things they wanted you to do. And now you're going to insist that you're not like that after all? Now you're going to give them proof that you've gone to the monster side?"

Potter took a step towards. Severus imagined for a moment that he could feel that hot breath puffing across his face, and then realized it was only the exhalation of Potter's power. He flickered away nonetheless, and ended up standing on the roots of the tree.

"My pack is absolutely and utterly loyal to me," Potter murmured. "So are my friends. And would you run to the Ministry to tell on the person who granted you your justice and your freedom?" He tilted his head, his gaze wise with a darkness that Severus thought more human than werewolf. "I didn't think so," he added when Severus remained silent.

Severus was caught in a shivering fit which might or might not show in his astral body; he didn't know. The important of it was mostly internal.

He had basked in Potter's power the other day, in the sense that Potter was finally becoming what he should have been—edged, sharp,dangerous—and that he wielded the wolf as a weapon instead of the other way around. That had been enough to attract him irrevocably when he was sure his experience of that power would remain purely abstract.

Now here was an offer to use that power on his behalf.

He knew that part of Potter's desire to use it for him was because he was a victim. Potter didn't have any fond memories of Severus from school, and Severus wasn't a werewolf that he could shelter in his pack and make his subordinate, so it must simply be that he wanted someone to rescue.

With the possibility of real freedom opening up in front of him, though, Severus couldn't bring himself to mind the role. His pride had given him nothing so far but a way to endure death. If Potter could give him life…

He willed his astral body to match the state of his physical body as it was at that moment. It wouldn't hurt him, since he was unable to feel anything when he was spiritual.

Potter's eyes widened and went on widening until Severus thought he could see straight through them into the wild soul that Potter carried within him. Then Potter whirled and sank his fingers into a tree.

They punched straight into the bark and stabbed at least halfway through, making the tree, a sturdy pine about forty feet high, wobble. It didn't matter that Potter lacked claws in human form, Severus thought, watching greedily. He had done this. And he would probably do and dare worse to get Severus out.

Potter ripped his hand free. The tree listed and sagged. Potter circled and punched it from the other side, and it fell straight over, crackling and rustling other branches, creating a hollow boom that echoed through the forest. Severus felt a vague disappointment; surely the other members of the pack would hear that and come running back to find out what was wrong with their precious leader. But he had already taken the gamble and was committed now.

He stepped forwards so that Potter would stop punching trees—as exciting as that was—and pay attention to him.

Potter immediately stepped up to him and carefully extended his arms to encircle Severus's body. Severus couldn't feel it. That didn't matter. The very fact of the gesture made him close his eyes in hope and need. And Potter's strength flowed over him like a riptide, a riptide that had decided of its own free will not to hurt him. Oh, it would hurt other people in his defense, but never him.

"Who did this to you?" Potter asked, and this time it sounded as though he could barely voice the words. His primal urges taking over and strangling him, Severus supposed.

"My father," Severus said. He had thought it would be hard to confess that truth, since, after all, Potter didn't even know his parents. It wasn't. Instead, the moment the words began to spill out, Severus found that he couldn't stop talking. "Dark magic contaminated him, and he started losing his mental balance. I think he probably always was a little mad, and the confinement to the Manor when my mother got sick made it worse. He killed Mum, but he uses an illusion to pretend that she's still alive when the Aurors visit. And he's been torturing me because he thinks I'm somehow sick with Dark magic and the torture will cure me."

Potter shifted and stepped away from him, his hands still extended in front of him and his eyes and teeth wickedly bright. "He's taken your wand?" he asked.

Severus nodded. "And he keeps me naked most of the time, so that I wouldn't survive long even if I did try to escape. I use the astral travel to avoid most of the pain. I'm sure that I would be dead or mad by now if I didn't."

Potter ducked his head as though to protect his throat. His eyes were hazy with thought. "Does anyone have a clue about this?"

Severus smiled, and he knew the smile was bitter, but he thought he had a right to make it that way. "The Aurors see what they want to see. Tobias is very good at disguising the fact that he killed Mum and he's abusing me. They ask a few questions, laugh and nod when my father says something witty, and then leave. I'm sure they think that I'm just a sulky man because I never say anything that Tobias doesn't order me to say."

Potter nodded. "And you're sure that your father has no chance to recover?"

Severus laughed. "Of course not," he said. "I think that he would have stopped short of using rats on me and impaling my knees with diamonds if there was any sanity left in him."

Potter stepped close to him again. Severus caught his breath. Potter hadn't grown taller—he was still only Severus's height, or even an inch shorter—but that aura of strength lent him all the bulk he needed.

"Can you last a few more weeks?" Potter asked. "That's all I'm asking for. No more than that. I should be able to find a way into the Manor and rescue you before then."

"I don't know if I can last," Severus said. "I don't know bad the damage is, or whether my father will hurt me so badly before then that I'll die." He found his astral body trembling and flickering again, which surprised him. He had thought he had accepted his impending death and no longer feared it.

With hope and the possibility of freedom, fear returns, he reminded himself. He ought to have remembered that from the war. The times when he was most afraid were the moments when he thought he might be able to escape the Dark Lord's influence and someone would discover his plans.

Of course, for understandable reasons, he hadn't thought much of the war in the past few months.

"How long has he been torturing you?" Potter asked. "Does he heal you afterwards?"

"I've rather lost track of time," Severus said, with a glance that produced a ducked head and a murmured apology from Potter. "He heals me, but his healing spells are always less powerful than his Dark magic, and he can't wait for long before he has to start torturing me again. He'll go too far and kill me soon, or my body will simply give up from all the damage it's taken."

Potter growled under his breath, which Severus took for defiance of fate rather than disagreement, and began pacing back and forth in front of Severus, his head bowed. Then he looked up and said, "This is a time I could wish the werewolf magic wasn't so effective. It sweeps through our bodies like fire when it touches us and burns out minor magical talents. I can't talk to snakes any more, and Celia used to be a Metamorphmagus but lost it when she changed. If she could still disguise her face effectively, I'd send her to the Manor and let her spy out a way to get through the wards. At least I could be sure your father wouldn't know who she was."

Severus shuddered. "If my father even suspects that someone is trying to rescue me, he'll go more mad than he already is. I can't comprehend the level of pain I would be in if that happens."

"I won't let that happen."

Potter's voice vibrated in his chest, and he had moved up so that his arms encircled Severus's ghostly form again. Severus smiled at him, unable to express the gratitude that pounded in the middle of his chest like a drumbeat.

"But you're right," Potter said. "It will take a lot of care to get around the wards, and I suspect that you can't do anything about them from inside?" Severus shook his head regretfully, and Potter clucked, as though he suspected his question had caused Severus pain. "Very well. You'll tell me about the weakest places in the wards. I'll get Hermione to bring me a book on exploiting weak places like those. It's Hermione, she'll be ecstatic to bring me a book. Especially one that isn't about werewolves." His voice was wry. "Tobias would recognize the bloody boy who conquered, Leila has a few old wounds that limit her motion, and I don't trust Hyacinth's control when she's away from me. It'll need to be Celia and Josh who spy out the Manor. Both of them were Muggleborn, so that increases the chance that your father won't have any reason to have seen them before."

"What are you going to do?" Severus breathed.

"Rescue you. I told you that." Potter lowered his head and let his nostrils flare, as though taking a deep breath of whatever scent he could smell from Severus's astral body comforted him. "You should never have had to suffer like this in the first place, but I can make sure that you don't have to suffer like this again."

"But how are you going to rescue me?" Severus wished he could hear what the plan was, so that he could have some hope to cling to as his father's whip fell on his body and he recovered from the wounds during the bouts of healing magic.

"I won't know that until I hear about the weak places in the wards." Potter's hands closed in on him, and then drew back again as Potter seemed to remember that he couldn't actually touch Severus. "And…if worst comes to worst, there's one particular thing that I know would work, but it would involve a lot of risk to you as well as to us, since Tobias would have no doubt that we were breaking into the Manor."

Severus shook his head. "Save that plan for the absolute last option."

"We will. It's time-dependent." Potter gave a smile that Severus didn't understand, and then it changed to an earnest look and he bent down and looked into Severus's eyes from a short distance away. "I need you to do one thing other than tell me about the weak places in the wards, Severus."

"I'll try," Severus whispered. It would be wonderful to have someone to help him against Tobias, and he almost believed that Potter would be that person, but the fear of acting against Tobias for himself was still stifling.

"Endure," Potter whispered back. "Last until we can figure out a way. And whether we have to use the time-dependent plan, or whether we manage to discover something before then, I promise you, we willcome."

Severus nodded. "I can do that. I can try." He hesitated, then asked, "Are you sure your pack will cooperate with you to save me? Muggleborns wouldn't have much reason to like Snapes."

"They do what I tell them to," Potter said simply.

And it was the command in those words, the assurance of unquestioned power, that at last gave Severus faith as well as hope.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Not long now, Sevvy."

Tobias spoke the words warmly into his ear, while slathering a thick potion over Severus's shoulders and arms that would make him feel as if he were being eaten alive in seven minutes. Severus began to shiver and couldn't stop. Tobias sighed and said, "I know that you're not cold. You must try to be courageous. The Dark magic is nearly purged from your body. You've been very good and very brave. All I ask is that you try to endure a little longer."

That's what I'm afraid I won't be able to do, Severus thought.

When he could feel the sensations like a powerful throat closing in on him and crushing him flat to fit in a stomach, he snapped his spirit free of his body and went seeking Potter.

"Frankly, I don't think it'll work." Celia swiped a hand through her hair, frowning. "From what Snape says, the wards are strong enough to keep out even changed werewolves. Why should we be able to find a way through them when we're in human form?"

Severus winced, but tried to be satisfied with Potter's quick reassuring glance. When he stood, all his pack's eyes automatically followed his movements and Hyacinth lifted her head from the half-doze she'd been in. Severus settled back against a tree root and tried to look as casual as he could, even though Potter was the only one who could see or hear him when they were this far from the full moon.

"I'm not asking you to attack through the wards." Potter paced in a circle, his eyes abstracted and his hands folded behind his back as though he were holding the leash of a dangerous animal in them. For all that Severus knew, he was. He only knew that Potter's control over his wolf was great; he still didn't understand the full extent of it. "I want to know about the weaknesses of the wards instead, and particularly those areas where it looks as though two or more of them are patched together to create a seamed cover."

"I know what you mean," Josh said, leaning forwards. "I've studied wards before. But if we probe at those seams—"

"You'll alert Tobias Snape. I know." Potter's quick reassuring glance was for the werewolf this time. Severus scowled, not liking to admit how jealous that simple gesture had made him feel. "That's why I don't want you to probe at them, and leave in an instant if you feel that he might notice and challenge you. Simply identify them. I want to know everything you can tell me about the points on the house where they're located, from a physical description of the stone and metal they're covering to their direction relative to the sun and moon."

Celia and Josh exchanged confused glances. Severus tried to look wise, then remembered that no one could see him anyway and he might as well be as hopelessly lost as the rest.

He had figured out, once he had some time away from Potter and the overwhelming rush of hope and fear and faith, that the time-dependent plan must be to attack as werewolves when the next full moon came about. But that was a problem, because their Manor had wards against werewolves, as did any ancient wizarding house. Those wards would be at the height of their strength when the full moon shone.

Potter had smiled when Severus told him that, but he hadn't mentioned why. When Severus pressed him for details, Potter said, "If you act too hopeful, your father might figure out something is wrong." He'd bent down towards Severus, his eyes so bright and so deep that it was difficult to look at him. "Do you think you would be able to keep the secret of what we're going to do hidden from his Legilimency? Be honest, now."

Severus had admitted that he wasn't sure due to the effort it took to simply stay alive, and Potter had reached out and brushed his hand through Severus's shoulder in that way that tended to leave a trail of tingles behind. "Then I'm going to ask you to trust me for right now, and respect that, eventually, we'll rescue you."

"He wants us to trust him," Hyacinth said in her deep voice, her eyes turning wolf-yellow in the sunlight. She put her head back down on her hands, which she treated rather like forepaws at times, and blinked around at Celia, Josh, and Leila. "To trust him absolutely, in the way that we keep promising we do and in the way that Snape has to, and to do what he asks without demanding every single detail."

"I think we could have figured that out on our own, Hyacinth," Celia said in a brittle voice that made Hyacinth's eyes deepen a shade or two. Severus heard a slight snarl working its way up her throat, and doubted Celia would have said any of that if she'd been closer to Potter's second-in-command. "But I at least want to know the reason that Harry is so intent on hiding this from us."

"Very well."

Potter tossed his head back and let his strength go flooding over the clearing. Severus was glad, once again, that no one could see or hear his response, which included a needy whimper. The rest of the pack stood up or crowded closer, eager whines breaking from their lips. Potter held them like that for a series of endless moments that made Severus think he'd lose his breath from panting, and then released his strength.

The rest of the pack looked faintly embarrassed, except for Hyacinth. She gave Potter a nod and a smile that made Severus think she'd wag her tail if she possessed one in this form.

"So far," Potter said, looking from one to the other of them with a gaze that made them lower their heads, "Hyacinth and I are the only ones who can do that reliably. I felt you trying to do it on the last hunt, Leila, but you got distracted and it faltered." Leila gave him a hesitant smile. "That sharing of strength links us as a pack. We're more likely to act in concert when we can respond to each other's power. But because the rest of you tend to follow at my heels instead of carrying your strength around you constantly in a fanned-out umbrella, then I'm the one who has to do the most thinking and acting. And you imitate me instead of being able to act independently."

Celia started to protest. "Hyacinth was able to run ahead during the hunt and break the doe's back—"

"And she was the only one." Potter looked at her until she sighed and nodded. "I want all of you able to do that, to carry out your own decisions in wolf form and let us know, through the medium of that connected strength, what you're doing and which direction you're moving. It's vitally important that you learn how to do that before we can rescue Severus. And I don't want to tell you more than that because it'll lead into discordance between your wolves—which want to do what I command—and your human selves—which are used to comparing a leader's decisions with your own inclinations. For the moment, you have to work with your power and extend it to each other as well as to me. And trust me."

"Behave like wolves with the intelligence of humans," Leila muttered.

"Isn't that what we are, after all?" Potter tossed her a smile.

No, Severus could have said. There was also the side of the wolf that was mindless hunger and didn't act like a pack beast. But simply by choosing to be here and following Potter, Severus suspected that most of them had grown past that stage and didn't need to be reminded that it existed.

Most of them, maybe. He glanced sideways at Hyacinth.

That was another reason Potter refused to explain his plan, he reckoned. The belief that a werewolf could balance control of the human and control of the wolf wasn't a common one, and was the reason that so many of them became weaklings or monsters, from Potter's point-of-view. He was trying to maintain an even more delicate balance at the moment, forcing his pack to put their beliefs into practice. Over-explaining it would ruin that element of belief that was crucial to achieving the sharing of power. Potter needed to make it sound simple, not complicated, although it was an aspect of the complicated things that he asked his pack to do every day.

And I think that I understand it. Severus ran a hand through his hair, wishing absently that he could feel things. It would make it easier to feel like he was accomplishing something when he was angry or upset.

It seemed that Potter had noticed his distressed expression. He said quietly, "Celia, Josh, step into the woods and practice walking silently. It'll be best if you go near the wards around Snape Manor with as little magic as possible. Leila, if you would read this?" He held out a heavy book that Severus hadn't seen the last time he was here. "Hermione gave it to me, and I can't understand half the moves it suggests for finding the seams in wards and exploiting them."

Leila accepted and opened the book. "Where would you be without my vocabulary?" she teased.

"A place that I don't like to think about," Potter said, turning her joking statement into a serious one, and giving her a dazzling smile that caused Severus to glance away. It didn't matter that Potter was doing all this to rescue Severus; he knew that Potter still cared more strongly about his pack. Severus wasn't a werewolf, after all.

Leila, not smiling now, nodded back to Potter, a formal bob of her head that looked like a bow, and began to read.

Potter turned to Hyacinth.

"You'll need to go into the most isolated part of the forest for this," he told her. "If you spread your power too near the edges of the woods, you know that other wizards will feel it. And we don't want to make the Muggles uneasy and inspire someone to come investigate rumors of large dogs running wild. Concentrate as hard as you can. Remember that you need to be able to prevent it from soaring out like a net to touch everything in sight." He stroked the back of Hyacinth's neck. "My power is greater than yours, but your range is wider, and you need to gain that fine edge of control."

Hyacinth nodded with a slow blink of her eyes, as if she were absorbing Potter's words on a deeper level than mere speech. In a moment, she had risen to her feet and padded away into the woods—more silently than Celia and Josh could yet move, he noticed.

Potter looked straight at him and beckoned.

"You want me to follow the big bad wolf into the forest?" Severus asked lightly, but he floated to his feet with a sense of relief. He still wasn't completely comfortable with the pack. They were rescuing him only because Potter demanded it, he knew. At least he had the sense that Potter was more interested in him as a person.

Or victim, he reminded himself, but still his hope was fresher and brighter as he followed Potter around the trunks of oaks and pines until they could no longer see Leila reading the book.

Potter sat down on a stump, and Severus drifted down onto the grass in front of him. Potter held his eyes for long moments, and said, "You've told us about all the weak places that you know of in the wards?"

"Yes," Severus said. "And I have to tell you, my father knows about the weakness of seams and how to counteract them, and he has wards that specifically fight werewolves."

"I know that," Potter said. "I don't distrust you. I simply wanted to make sure that nothing else had occurred to you since we last spoke." He slid to the foot of the stump, propping one elbow on it and putting his hand beneath his chin as he stared at Severus.

Severus cleared his throat uneasily. It made sense that Potter would share serious moments with his pack, since he had known them for so long and had all sorts of history with them that Severus didn't know about. But his trying to have moments like that with Severus pleased and frightened and irritated him.

Of course, after so long with Tobias, Severus sometimes wondered if there was anything he didn't fear anymore.

"Potter, why do you care so much?" he had to ask. "Would you care this much if one of your friends, or someone you were indifferent to in school, came to you and asked for help?"

"If it were one of my friends, I would feel guilt, because I should have been aware of it and noticed the changes in their behavior," Potter said quietly. He was staring Severus in the eye again. "If it was someone I had been indifferent to, I would care once I figured out what was wrong, but not so much."

"Then why with me?" Severus tried to look haughty. "Is it because you enjoyed seeing me struggle against my pride before I finally decided to accept your help?"

"How could that be, when I didn't know you were fighting a struggle or that you hadn't already told the truth to someone else?" Potter tipped his head forwards so that his hair fell across his eyes. Severus was at once relieved and a bit disappointed. "No. I care more because—because before I knew something was wrong, you watched us hunt, and you were fascinated. And you're fascinated now, I can see it. You notice every time I do something that has a hint of the wolf to it. Yourespond. I can't help but enjoy someone who enjoys my pack." Potter looked up, his face wistful. "My friends have been wonderful, but they just don't look at it the same way you do. Hermione pities me and wants to work on a cure. Ron believes in me but only because I was already his friend, not because he really thinks that a werewolf can change. A few people they've hinted the truth to are horrified. I've accepted reality, because the wolf is so powerful in you that it's like learning to live with a new limb—or the loss of one. Everyone else still sees the wolf as something extra attached to me that they'd like to pull off."

He leaned forwards and reached out to put a hand on Severus's knee before he remembered. "Except you."

Severus let his eyelashes veil his eyes. He had to remind himself that, unlike everyone else he had watched in his astral form, there was a chance—there must be a chance—that he and Potter would meet in the flesh someday. When that happened, Severus didn't want him to be disappointed.

"One of the reasons I like watching you so much is that I'm attracted to power," he confessed. "It's not—it's not pure and detached in the way that you're making it sound, Potter. I want power, too. It's one of the reasons that I waited so long before I talked to you about my situation. I wanted the power of keeping the secret and fooling you with lies."

"I don't care," Potter said. "Other people with better motivations than yours still can't bring themselves to respond the way you did. I think—I think I care more about the consequences in this case than the reason behind those actions." He eased closer, his stare direct into Severus's obsidian eyes again.

Severus looked away and said lightly, "I'm not a wolf. You don't have to try and prove to me that you're dominant."

"I don't want to." Potter left it at that, and Severus had to wonder if he meant that he wasn't trying to prove he was dominant or that he was doing it even though he didn't want to.

I think Potter has better control of his wolf than that, Severus decided, because anything else would be too frightening, and asked, "What do you think will happen when you rescue me?"

"We'll give you what you want, of course." Potter eased back on his heels, and when Severus looked at him again, he was gazing out into the forest, his arms folded so that his hands hung down on his knees. "We'll take you to the Ministry if you want, or St. Mungo's if you think that would be better. Or we can take you to a friend's house if you have anyone who would shelter you."

"St. Mungo's would probably be best," Severus admitted, though he winced at the thought of what the Healers would say when they saw his wounds. He didn't think some of the things Tobias had done to him could ever be healed. But at least he would be free, with the chance to find magic that might help him. "I won't be walking out of that Manor."

Potter looked back at him with a softened face. "Of course not."

They sat in silence for some time after that, when Potter had asked again if Severus remembered any additional facts about the wards and Severus had admitted that he couldn't think of anything. Potter folded his arms behind his head and basked in the sunlight with his face pointed directly at it and his eyes closed. Severus watched him, and took in the strength that crackled around him as best he could, an antidote to the horror that waited for him in the back of his mind and the memory of his muscles.

If he cares about me inappropriately, I also care about him inappropriately. Severus knew he would be quite content to remain by Potter's side and watch him act the beautiful, dangerous wild animal for years.

And he had no idea why.

"The cure is almost complete, Severus."

Severus looked down at the shreds of his left leg and wondered if he should try to learn something from Tobias, something that might help Potter when his pack came to raid their Manor. Unfortunately, Tobias's madness almost never wandered in directions that would be comprehensible to anyone else, and Severus could hardly think through the pain that enveloped him in a shroud.

He did manage to pluck up the courage and the words to say, "Why do you think you're so close to the antidote to the Dark magic, sir?"

Tobias smiled and stroked his hair. Severus had to look away. He would see the father who had held him when he was born and praised his first efforts at magic if he kept gazing at Tobias now.

"I have at last removed most of your tainted magical core, and replaced it with the stronger, purer magic that will save your life," Tobias explained. His hand never stopped petting Severus, moving from his hair to his face. His fingers dipped into the hole in Severus's cheekbone, and Severus shut his eyes and tried not to cry out. He had to remain in his body long enough to listen to this, pain or no pain. It was the closest Tobias had ever come to stating his goals outright. "There are a few patches of dark, stubborn power that I cannot yet eliminate without killing you." Tobias's fingers curved downwards and jerked, and Severus heard the sound of the hole ripping wider. "But do not worry," Tobias finished, seeming not to understand that his fingers had expressed his anger and that Severus was more than worried. "Those patches should be done away with in a few weeks' time. There is one particularly powerful spell that I can only perform on the night of the full moon, and we must wait for that."

Severus let his spirit leap free from his body as Tobias dragged him towards the spiked bed set up in the corner of the room. He had discovered information that would prove helpful to Potter and the rest of his pack. He clung to that triumph and endeavored to forget about the agony that was coiling through his physical being, far behind and below him.

"That is wonderful news."

Severus stared, not understanding. He had expected his warning about the night of the full moon to anger or worry Potter, who surely didn't need any more complications added to what sounded like a very complex plan already. But instead Potter was prowling back and forth in front of him with his eyes brilliant with enthusiasm. He spun around to face Severus, and he spun on his heels in a movement that no human had ever performed so gracefully—though Severus had to admit that he couldn't imagine a wolf performing it, either.

"Don't you see?" Potter asked. "If Tobias is involved with a powerful spell that night, he will have less attention to spare for us."

"I don't know," Severus said. "When the attack begins, he could drop the spell and focus on you, and he'll be all the angrier for being interrupted. Or he might kill me."

He had to turn his face from Potter, because he knew emotions that he didn't want to show would be flickering across his expression. He was no longer able to regard his own death with indifference, which was the thing that he hated most about having hope.

"He might," Potter said. "Or the spell might go wrong when he gets distracted and do something unexpected and horrible to you."

Severus stared at him in shock. Potter didn't sound at all concerned, and Severus didn't understand that. "You—I thought you cared about what happened to me," he said, his voice coming out with difficulty. "If only because I respond better to you than so many other people would."

In a moment, Potter abandoned his pacing and knelt down in front of Severus with terrifying swiftness. His eyes were bright and tender, and he swiped at Severus's cheek with one hand. Severus recoiled before remembering that this form didn't show the hole in his face, and that Potter couldn't hurt him even if it did.

"I'm sorry," Potter whispered. "Part of the problem is knowing how much I should explain to you and how much I shouldn't. And I don't want to favor you over my own pack, while being conscious of the impulse to do so." Severus narrowed his eyes, wanting to discuss howthat had come about, but Potter was babbling on. "I think our best chance lies in Tobias's madness. No matter what he does that night, I don't think he'll respond rationally, while my pack should be able to respond more than rationally if we all learn to extend our strength to one another." He paused reflectively.

"And I would do anything to avoid seeing you hurt," he said. "Anything."

Severus bowed his head. The forest was whirling around him. Potter's green-golden eyes, his intense stares, the lowered tone of his voice…Severus had once imagined the last two things in a distinctly different context, with a distinctly different face.

It would be typical of my life that the closest I'll ever get to the protective and possessive lover I've dreamed of is Harry Potter, he thought dazedly.

"Severus?" Potter's voice was tender again, but a bit louder.

Severus swallowed and opened his eyes. "I'm fine," he said. "What have you discovered about the wards?"

Potter paused and then began to explain, but all the while, he sat far too close and kept reaching out his hand so that his fingers brushed through Severus's astral form, causing infuriating tingles.

Severus, who knew that this didn't have a chance of lasting, reckoned that he would just have to endure that, too.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

When he could stand to be in his body, Severus listened to Tobias's rambling. His father frequently talked about the full moon—though the details of the spell were frustratingly vague; Tobias seemed more interested in the technical details of phases, of all things—and cures for Dark magic and how Severus would walk at his side when he was completely cured.

And maybe that would happen, if I finally go mad and if Potter doesn't come for me and if I could ever walk again, Severus thought.

He had had one glimpse of his legs as his father maneuvered him from one iron frame to another. One was enough. His bones were tiny fragments scattered through thin strips of flesh and blood. Severus knew that he couldn't walk on them. He could barely crawl, mostly through dragging himself forwards on his arms, when Tobias put him down in a bed and went to brew healing potions.

Tobias didn't seem to care. He put his hands more frequently on Severus's face now, and seemed to stare at him with more and more affection.

"You won't be like Eileen," he whispered. "I had to kill her to purge her. How I mourned her, my lovely wife, but it had to be done. I won't bear a taint on our family." His hand was fever-hot when he slid it into Severus's hair, or maybe that was Severus's skin. If he didn't have a fever by now, he would be surprised. "But you'll be free."

Yes, Severus said in the back of his mind, I will be.

For now, he could only bow his head and endure.

Meanwhile, the pack practiced their magic.

Either Celia or Josh was absent all the time now; one of them was always spying on the Manor, Severus understood. He found himself more tense than usual, but so far, there was no indication that Tobias had noticed them, which was nothing short of incredible. He relaxed the most when he happened to be in the glade as one of them came back from their latest mission and reported on the weaknesses in the wards to Potter.

The three still there practiced constantly. Potter would sit in the center or the side, depending on how much attention he thought they needed from him and where Severus preferred to sit. He would give instructions that made little sense to Severus in a low voice that was soothing just to listen to, like water trickling through a distant river. Leila, and Hyacinth, and Josh or Celia, would nod, and then try to swing their power out over their heads in certain patterns, or try to touch only one member of the pack and not others, or try to let Severus feel it.

They were beautiful to watch. Severus would catch his breath as their power flooded over him, thick and prickling, like being rubbed in pine needles. He would watch as their eyes widened and their bodies trembled with two auras overlapped each other. He saw Leila blink back tears and Hyacinth speak as calmly as Potter himself to assure a trembling Celia, who had accidentally jabbed Hyacinth with her magic, that she wasn't angry. He saw them flowing through the sunlight with strength and grace that couldn't belong to humans.

Potter was more beautiful than any of them.

Even when he sat still and let the rest of his pack take center stage, Severus found his eyes going back to Potter again and again. The scar and the green eyes and the way he lounged on his side or his haunches didn't hurt, but none of those was the main reason. Severus would have been attracted to a beautiful person, but he wouldn't have considered surrendering to them, the way he did with Potter.

That's ridiculous, he told himself, when the urge became overwhelming enough that he nearly prostrated his astral body before Potter. You're not even a werewolf.

But the impulse remained. Potter didn't have to show his strength. His control was perfect. On the rare occasions when one of his people turned towards Severus and flashed resentful teeth, a snap or a growl settled them. As the weeks turned towards the full moon and restlessness tormented the pack, Potter simply increased his intent stares and the way he could walk stiff-legged across the glade, ready for a fight. The pack would subside into placidity.

So far as Severus could tell, that placidity was never resentful. Leila, in particular, seemed relieved that Potter could give her some relief from the pressure of her wolf.

And again, that was all very well. But that made sense for a werewolf pack, and Severus continued not to be a werewolf.

A steadily decaying body locked in his ancestral home, yes, but not a werewolf.

Finally he settled on the only thing that might give him the clue to the mystery. Potter knew a lot about the magic of his kind. Perhaps he had deliberately set out to enchant Severus, though why he should wish to do that when Severus was already eager to be rescued…

That's why you'll ask him, Severus told himself sternly, and waited for his opportunity.

Potter had sent his pack into the forest today, with instructions to spread out, then to extend their power and see how long it took them to find each other. He had said nothing about Severus going with them, so Severus chose to stay.

Potter lay in the sunlight, turned unselfconsciously on his side with his face sheltered under one arm. Severus swallowed as he drifted down to the grass next to him. A sharp ache filled him. He couldn't feel the grass or the warmth of the air or the small white flower that he reached out and brushed a hand over, but he could feel that.

"Potter," he whispered.

Potter rolled his arm off his face as slowly as dripping honey. His eyes opened likewise slowly, revealing a thin ring of gold around the green. It was less than a week to the full moon, Severus reminded himself. He had no excuse for staring with delight and wonder, as if Potter's showing his eyes like that was some sort of conjuring trick.

"I do wish, Severus," Potter said in a voice that was deep and seemed to dive under Severus's tamely floating body, "that you would call me by my first name, the way that you call the rest of us."

"I don't know their last names," Severus said, and stopped. What an idiot he sounded like. There was no reason for him not to ask the last names of the rest of the pack, if that was so important to him. It would be far simpler to do was Potter requested and call him by his first name.

Except that that would open a door he couldn't shut.

Except he had no idea why.

He shivered and licked his lips. Then he said, simply because he wanted to hear what it sounded like and not because he wanted to obey, "Harry."

A new and softened smile crept over Potter's lips then. He raised himself on his arms and knees and gave a lazy shake that made him resemble a dog shaking off water. Severus told himself so, in a half-panicked attempt to stave off whatever was creeping towards them.

Harry gave him an amused glance and moved towards him on all fours, as naturally as he would on two legs.

"I don't understand this," Severus whispered. "I don't know what's happening." He shivered, he was sure, so that his edges blurred, but he didn't move away. He used to be so in control. It seemed that there was none of that anymore.

"I told you," Harry said, as if he were answering the question Severus had asked, "that werewolf magic is a magic of the body." He shut his eyes and took a long sniff, as if he could draw all the scent that Severus shed into his nostrils and use it to refresh himself. When he opened his eyes again, the ring of gold had expanded. "It alters our senses, increases our strength, and burns out minor magical talents in favor of its own existence. And it alters our constitution."

Severus managed to clear his throat with an effort. He would not allow himself to be so disconcerted simply because Harry chose to look at him with those shining eyes. "That's the same thing as saying it increases your strength."

"No." Harry came closer to him still, his fingers scraping softly in the grass. He was near enough now that Severus should have backed away to maintain a polite distance, but he sat still. "It increases our health. We heal faster. We immediately lose any disease we had when we become werewolves, and it takes a lot to make us sick after that. Leila thinks it's a protection against eating meat from animals who might be unhealthy." Harry rolled his shoulders, as if to say that he didn't know enough to disagree. "And, combined with our senses, it lets us notice things about ourselves that we didn't know before. Leila thought the injury she received a long time ago had mostly left her unaffected, but now she knows it impaired her movement. Celia tells me that she thought she was sincerely ignoring some taunts from a woman who didn't like her. Now she knows she hates the woman and has fantasies of revenge about her."

"I don't understand what this has to do with me," Severus said.

"Of course you don't," Harry said, but the rumble of his disgust was almost affectionate. He sat back on his haunches again and cocked his head. Since it didn't actually put that much distance between them, Severus remained on his guard. "Being a werewolf makes it harder to lie to yourself, at least if you strive to keep your human side," Harry continued in a soft voice. "I know, now, that I would like to continue associating with you after we rescue you from your father, at least if you want to."

"And what I'm feeling—" Severus made a gesture between them, trying to indicate the almost solid attraction that tied him to Potter like an iron chain.

"My interest, pressing on you." Harry shrugged without lifting his hands from the earth. "Sorry about that."

Severus swallowed. "That explanation doesn't work, though. I felt drawn to your power even before you realized I'd found you."

"Did you, now?"

And Harry leaned forwards, and Severus leaned to meet him at the same time even though their faces couldn't touch, and he knew he was lost.

They didn't kiss, of course. Instead, Harry turned his head sideways and rubbed it up and down through the image of Severus's face, causing another flow of tickling tingles over Severus's imagined skin. He should have looked ridiculous, he probably did, but his expression was grave and intent. Severus saw his fingers flicker and blend into each other as he reached up and laid a hand along the side of Harry's cheek.

Harry held his gaze. He didn't blink—maybe his eyes didn't get dry as easily now that he'd become a werewolf—and Severus didn't have to. So the interchange of their glances went on and on, and finally Harry ducked his head and reached out to hover his hand just above Severus's knee.

"Well, now," he said, the depths of his voice not enough to hide the happiness. "Well, now."

Severus reached out to him in turn, and they sat, intangible hand clasped in intangible hand, until Harry heard the sounds of the pack returning.

Severus lived for the moments he could snatch alone with Harry in the forest. Watching the pack wasn't enough anymore and neither was rejoicing in the beauty of a place outside the Manor's walls. He wanted to spend time with Harry, listen to his voice, and imagine a variety of impossible scenarios that he knew could never come true.

Harry had taught him to hope, and have faith. Now he taught Severus to dream.

He lay in the sunlight and whispered about the time when Severus would feel it, too, before breaking off into a description so that Severus could imagine it falling on his skin now, the way it hadn't done in months. He hadn't really taken the time to learn the sun when he could. "You remember the way it presses on your skin like a hand when it's strong enough? And when you shut your eyes and turn your face towards the sun, you feel as though someone was stroking your cheek? And the warmth increases until you want to get away from it, but at the same time, you don't want to, because it's delicious, like lying awake in bed on a sunny morning, and you want it to continue forever…"

He picked up leaves and fanned them out for Severus so that he could count the veins and see the delicate fuzzy edges. It was the next best thing to touching them.

And he sat, leaning against a boulder, and fanned his power out so that Severus could bathe in it, like being surrounded by a thick and fuzzy wolf-pelt.

Severus still didn't entirely understand why this was happening to him, but he was at peace with the fact that it was. Whether it was a combination of the way he smelled and his own unique attraction to power, or just the fact that Harry could see and hear him and make him feel less alone, or because Harry had asked for the truth about Severus's injuries and then not laughed, Severus didn't care. He suspected it was a combination of all those things, but he didn't need to prove it. He gave himself blissfully up to watching Harry, to listening to him, and to wishing he could touch his skin, stroke his hair, kiss him.

When he finally voiced that wish aloud, Harry gazed at him for a long moment with wild eyes and said nothing. But the next day, he beckoned Severus away into the forest immediately, hardly even bothering to make his usual excuses to the pack. Once again, he sat on his haunches facing Severus, his eyes so close that Severus shivered with excitement.

"I'm going to try something," Harry whispered. "It's theoretically possible. I never thought of trying it, but I'm the strongest werewolf in the pack. If anyone here can do it, I should be able to."

He stretched his hands out in front of him and closed his eyes. Severus watched half-uneasily, wondering what could take so much effort out of Harry, and if it was a good idea to encourage him to do it. Hyacinth would kill him if Severus did something to harm Harry. He was sure she could probably burst through the wards on her own and tear the rest of his body apart if she was angry enough.

Harry's aura of power returned, hovering around his hands, concentrating on his fingers until Severus thought he could see them grow fuzzy, like his own. Harry rubbed his palms together, and the forest of charged air around his fingers became visible. It was as black as the fur of his wolf.

Harry opened his eyes, his body shaking with the effort, and reached out to place a hand on Severus's arm.

This time, Severus felt it, and not as a series of tingles.

He shuddered, and cried out before he could stop himself. Harry's hand burned with fever heat, fire heat. Severus could feel all the lines on his palm, and the roughness on the edge of one nail where he'd gnawed it. Looking down revealed a blaze to the skin that he had to shield his eyes from.

But he didn't need to see right now. He could see anytime. The miracle, which paralyzed him, was that he could feel Harry.

Harry leaned forwards, bowing his head, and Severus reached up and touched his hair. The power had gathered there, too, but Harry's head was ordinarily so frizzy that he hadn't noticed it. Curls rasped against his fingers. Severus shuddered. He had a feeling that his face had changed to reflect his tears.

Harry said nothing about it. He lifted his head and pressed his lips against Severus's.

Severus could not remember the last time someone had kissed him. He shut his eyes again and concentrated on the slow slide of Harry's lips, the shy tap of a tongue, the feeling of dry and chapped skin.

"Oh, God," he whispered.

Harry leaned away from him, and the aura of power dropped away, melting back into his skin. Severus knew that he would feel nothing if he reached for him now. He hooked his arms around his knees so that he wouldn't be tempted to try it and shut his eyes.

"I was right," Harry said, so drained that even his voice sounded less triumphant than it should have. "Werewolf magic is a magic of the body, right? If I'm strong enough, I ought to be able to give you a taste of the body." His voice turned wry. "I wouldn't want to try the mind or the soul, but the body I can do." He hesitated, then added, "I'm sorry I couldn't make it last longer."

"That's the first time someone's touched me kindly in months," Severus whispered. He refused to open his eyes. "Don't you dare apologize for not being able to give me more than a miracle."

Harry said nothing for long moments. When Severus looked again, fearing that he might have unwittingly offended him, he saw Harry gazing at him with a look as bright and fresh as spring.

"You're welcome," he said.

And so the time wore on until the full moon.

Severus still couldn't find out any details of the spell. He fretted to Harry about it, and Harry told him not to worry about it. He had just made his arms real and held Severus in them for a full five minutes, so Severus felt more inclined to trust him than he otherwise would have.

"I don't like it, though," Harry admitted, as he sat up and brushed leaves out of his hair. Severus had discovered a tendency in himself to watch the simple motions of Harry's hands with lust and admiration, and he had to stare at the ground to prevent an embarrassing expression from overcoming his face. "I do wish we had more details. I think our plan is going to work no matter what, but if we knew in what direction your father's insanity is likely to explode…"

"Would that matter?" Severus had to ask, long and bitter experience of his father's madness driving him. "He would be utterly unpredictable when the spell was disrupted even if you knew what he was originally planning to do."

"Yes," Harry said simply, lifting his head, "but it might be easier to protect you. And that's really all I care about."

Severus stared at him. His eyes were glowing in the sunshine, and once again he had the look of a wild animal, though this time it was more as if he were one lying down outside a place where he had to wait while a companion walked into danger. Maybe a member of his pack, Severus thought dazedly. He could at least hope that Harry would think about a member of his pack that way.

"Why?" Severus whispered. "You know this is mad, and it won't last once you rescue me."

"I don't think we can be sure of that," Harry said calmly. "We don't know what your condition will be."

"But it's bad." Severus slapped a hand on the forest floor beside him and didn't even have the satisfaction of an impact, but he had to find a way to convince Harry. "You'll be revolted by the sight of me, or by how long it takes me to recover."

Harry growled. Severus swallowed and found himself holding very still, though Harry could have lunged at him in full wolf form with teeth bared and it wouldn't have done anything. Some human instincts were unconnected to a physical body, he decided.

"How dare you," Harry said. His voice was low enough that Severus had to concentrate very carefully on the individual words. Of course, at the moment he had plenty of incentive to concentrate. He could imagine all too well what would happen to his state of mind and body if Harry was angry enough to turn his back on Severus. "You think that I've watched people change into wolves without flinching and been able to get used to the way their bodies warp, and somehow still carried along this obsessive concern for purity and whole limbs? I don't care. It won't end, unless you want it to end because the big bad wolf is too dirty and marred for you. I want to protect you. I like you. I'm going to continue to do both." He paused, and Severus had to look away because his eyes were too fiery to meet. "Unless you want it to end," he repeated with slow deliberation.

Severus shook his head. "Of course not," he said. "I want to be rescued."

"And after?" Harry's voice was low and ugly. "Would it be too much effort for you to associate with werewolves? Too much of a trauma?"

"Stop it!" Severus snapped, turning to him. "Of course it won't. You know that I'm attracted to you, and I've given all my reasons why. They include the fact that you're a werewolf as much as they exist in spite of it."

"Then stop speaking as if I could be any shallower." Harry twitched in a way that made Severus think he was trying to flatten his ears. "I'm attracted to you. It'll go on being that way. We'll rescue you, yes, and after that we'll continue to be with you." He held out a hand, and the fuzzy aura surrounded it that meant he'd made it real for Severus. "Or just me, if you don't want the rest of the pack."

Severus reached out and put his hand in Harry's without hesitation. Harry closed his eyes at the sensation, as if he were the one who had been deprived of friendly physical contact for months. Severus had to smile in spite of himself at the ecstasy on Harry's face.

"I don't even know if I can survive at this point," he said. "I might die of my wounds as you rescue me. It seems a little premature to be arguing about who's going to abandon who."

"Then don't bring it up again," Harry said, with frozen dignity that he immediately undermined by taking Severus's hand into his own and rubbing it as if he could warm the fingers. He bowed his head so that he could look at their hands exclusively.

Severus bowed his head, too, and let it rest on Harry's shoulder, even though he couldn't feel that part of him. He was in the mood for comfort of many different kinds.

"Do not do anything stupid."

Severus blinked and turned around. He'd come to the clearing as usual that morning, but found Harry out for a run with the pack. He'd settled down on the grass to wait for him, and thought that the rest of the werewolves were gone.

Now he realized that Hyacinth had been resting in one of the houses, so still that Severus hadn't seen or heard her. She came out now on all fours and stared directly at him. It was only a few days before the full moon, and so the beast saw him through her eyes, Severus knew.

"I'm not planning to," Severus said defensively. "I plan to survive until you rescue me, and then I don't really care what my father does."

"I can't hear you," Hyacinth said. She shook her ragged clothes the way a dog would when shedding water, and fixed her nostrils, more than her eyes, on Severus. "I can hardly see you, for that matter. But I know you are there, and I thought it best to warn you. You are important to Harry, and therefore to me. If you do something stupid, you are likely to die, and Harry would not survive that. Not the way he is now," she added, as if she had seen Severus opening his mouth to dispute that. "Not as the lord of the balance between human and wolf. He would become a monster, giving in to the wolf's bloody instincts, because it is the only refuge available to someone with a grave disappointment and our condition. I know," she finished, with a sound of burned bitterness in her voice.

Severus licked his lips. "I really can't do much about whether I live or die, you know," he said. He knew that she couldn't hear him, but in case Harry came back, he wanted to show that he was willing. Just not able.

"He has never been so strongly drawn to anyone," Hyacinth said. She sat back on her haunches and licked at the curve of her elbow. Severus blinked. The action was completely unselfconscious. He didn't think she would have done that last month, when she was struggling so hard against her wolf. "Celia and Josh don't understand it. Leila has only a minimal grasp of the reason and insists on questioning him. But I know that you have the potential to make Harry happy. That is enough for me." She glanced up at him, and her eyes had gone entirely yellow, except for swimming flakes of scarlet that made Severus think she'd swallowed blood. "See that you do it. Do not try to claw your way free unless you have no choice. Do not despair. Do not tamely give in to your father."

Again, Severus tried to answer, but this time he was actually bereft of words. Hyacinth paused, tilting her head, her eyes bright and curious.

"If you are worried about not being able to survive the final rescue," she said, "you should not be. The werewolf changes all it comes into contact with. It heals them. If you are deeply wounded, then we can make sure you survive."

And then Hyacinth turned her head to the far side of the clearing and whined in welcome, so Severus turned around without trying to get her to explain what she meant. He didn't want Harry to think that he'd been doubting him again.

Harry stood there with the rest of the pack behind him. Despite the fact that they were all on two legs, Severus could see the animal in them, how the rest of them were oriented on Harry and ready to move at a word. Hyacinth rose to her feet without prompting and stepped closer, her eyes bright and fixed on Harry, her nostrils quivering.

"Severus," Harry said, smiling at him. Severus caught his breath and was afraid that he whimpered like another wolf. Harry was irresistibly attractive when he smiled, all his power surging through it as if it alone could compel obedience. "Watch."

He dropped his head back as if he were sunbathing and spread his arms. The rest of the pack responded at the same time, but spread their arms in different directions—to show that they were capable of acting independently, Severus supposed. Harry closed his eyes and gave a short howl.

Five different auras of strength spread out, mingling like sprays of water from different faucets. They whirled around the clearing and encircled Severus, who found himself shivering as he watched the results.

Hyacinth sprang into the air and came down as lightly as a leaf on Harry's left side. Leila had jumped at the same time, and though one of her legs gave way slightly and slowed her—probably the result of that old wound Harry had mentioned—she still managed to avoid Hyacinth even as she jumped past her and came down on Harry's right.

Celia and Josh leaped forwards with a speed that Severus knew was impossible even for werewolves, somersaulted three times before they hit the ground, and ended up on all fours in front of Severus. Their mouths were wide in exultant, ferocious smiles, but not exactly the same smile. What Harry wanted to happen had come true, Severus realized with wonder. The pack acted all at once, aware of each other's movements, but not in a way that would make them depend on each other. Not exactly the same.

Equal, but not identical.

Harry opened his eyes and smiled at Severus more brightly than before. If the power pulsing through the glade hadn't already rendered him speechless, that smile would have.

"It did what I thought it would do," Harry said. "The practice, I mean. It not only allows us to act together, it increases our strength, our speed, and our magic. We're being fed from four directions at once, and so all together we're more than the sum of our parts and more than make up for the strength we expend." He closed his eye in a slow wink at Severus. "That was why I wanted to know about the weak places and seams in the wards on the Manor. I know that you have defenses against werewolves, and even packs. But those are meant for ordinary werewolves and ordinary packs. What do you think is going to happen when the force of a pack five times as strong as usual hits them all at once?"

Severus still couldn't speak.

But he could go up to Harry and put his arms around him in wonder and delight—

And because of the strength in the clearing, it was no trouble at all for Harry to make his arms real enough to pick Severus up and spin him around in a wild dance that ended in a kiss, while the rest of the pack howled in triumph.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The full moon.

Severus knew it would rise that night even before his father came into the latest torture chamber pale with excitement, even before he remembered that Harry had told him yesterday that he would only have one more day of torture to endure. It was as though the moon was connected to the tide of blood in his veins and made it surge and dance and run with flames. Severus turned his head towards the window of the room, interested for the first time in a long time about what he could see from the Manor instead of from outside it.

"You feel it, don't you, my child?" Tobias whispered, smoothing his hair back from his forehead. He laughed giddily a moment later and leaned his head down so that his cheek rubbed against Severus's. "No reason you should not. The full moon is near, and its light means your freedom. Snapes have always been sensitive to changes in their personal fortunes." He chuckled, stroked Severus's hair, and pulled back so that he could turn to a cabinet full of differently colored vials. If Severus squinted, he could see a dangerous shimmer of heat and fumes above most of the potions.

I hope that you aren't sensitive to the change of a bunch of werewolves invading your sanctuary, Severus told his father mentally, and whispered, "Sir, I feel afraid when I don't know what you plan to do. Can't you give me a hint of what kind of spell or ritual you're going to perform?"

Tobias smiled kindly back at him. "Forgive me, Severus, but I think ignorance is the better protection for you in this case. Your mind would try to second-guess mine if you knew everything." He drew out a vial that was bright poison-green, looked at it critically for a moment, and then put it back on the shelf. "And this ritual is so delicate that the mental energy of the participants needs to be as calm and as united as possible."

Severus frowned and shifted in his chains. "But we me afraid and you confident, does that mean that we'll be calm together?"

Tobias chuckled again and gave him the same kind of glance he'd given the potion: flat and critical and dismissing him as an unfit participant in whatever magic he had in mind. "We both want you free of the Dark magic," he said. "That's enough union for the ritual." He smiled again, but this time it was more like the mad grins Severus had become used to seeing from him. "The twist is coming soon, Severus."

Yes, Severus thought, watching with a sharp ache in his heart as his father saw himself reflected in the glass of one of the vials and paused to stare at his own face. Yes, it is.

Then he closed his eyes and leaped free of his body so that he could tell Harry what he had learned about the ritual, small though the crumbs of information were.

"You've done very well, Severus."

Severus closed his eyes and let his head sag forwards with a sigh. He felt a bit stupid accepting comfort from Harry in this situation, when allhe had to do was wait. Harry was the one who had to coordinate an attack and worry about his people and whether Tobias's traps would manage to kill one of them.

Harry's voice sharpened, and the hands he'd made real for Severus and were smoothing up and down his face clamped down, making Severus wince with unexpected pain. "Don't start thinking that your life is unimportant compared to the lives of my pack. It's not the case, and I won't have you thinking it." He crouched down in front of Severus until Severus had no choice but to look at him. "If you start thinking that, do you know what I'll be obliged to do?"

"Not rescue me?" Severus whispered, trying desperately to crack a smile.

Harry's teeth snapped near his ear, enough to make Severus flinch. Harry leaned back on his heels, breathing deeply. "Sorry, I'm sorry," he whispered. "I never want to frighten you. But please don't joke about that, Severus. I can't bear the thought that you might come to believe it." He ducked his head until his chin rested on his folded arms and stared at Severus broodingly.

"All right, I apologize," Severus said. He could see the power around Harry now, even when he wasn't concentrating, settling on his shoulders like a furry green-grey cloak. "This can't be easy for you, either, since you're trying to control your natural instincts." He hesitated as Harry gave him a quick, grateful smile, then added, "And how does the rest of the pack feel about this? Really? I know Hyacinth doesn't care as long as you're happy, but don't Celia and Josh resent being asked to spy?"

Harry leaned back and looped his arms around his knees. "The rest of the pack understands balance," he said quietly. "I rescued them and taught them to manage their wolves and gave them a place to have hope and survive when they'd thought that they might never have that again. In return, they let me have the greatest chance at pure happiness I've had since I was changed." He lifted his head to glare challengingly at Severus. "And they understand strength, if they don't understand balance or friendship. They know that I'm strong enough to take what I want by myself, to rescue you if they won't help."

Severus stared at him in concern. Harry's eyes were wild and glittering; they looked like tunnels into an ocean with the sunlight playing on it. Severus remembered the way Harry had stood poised in the clearing with the pack around him, their strength overlapping each other's, and shook his head. "I think it's best if you come with the others."

"And I will." Harry gave him a smile that melted almost the moment it showed up. "But you wanted to know what they thought, and I told you."

Severus closed his eyes. He desired to sit forever in the reassurance that Harry's aura of power gave him, but he knew that he couldn't. So he settled for saying, "Do you think that you'll really manage to rescue me?"

Harry's head bumped against his, in a gesture that wiped clean the memory of Tobias nudging his cheek that morning. "Yes."

Severus didn't need any ornaments on that sentence, no extra words. He put his arms around Harry's neck and held him there, self-satisfied and content.

At least, content until Harry leaned towards him and whispered, "And you've been braver than you know, stronger than I can easily think about, so I don't have to ask if you'll manage to wait until we get there."

Harry's aura of strength meant the tears that soaked down Severus's face and into his hair were unfortunately real.

It was time.

Severus hung shivering in his bonds as Tobias arranged a circle of potions and small, irregular objects—golden blocks and silver mirrors and what looked like obsidian arrowheads—in front of him. The chains were different from anything he'd ever been bound by, made of crystal. Severus could feel the hum of magic in them without concentrating. The soft sunset light coming in through the windows seemed to energize the chains, and Severus wondered for a moment how Harry and the pack would get him out of them even if they managed to fight their way past the Manor's wards.

Which I'm no longer confident they will. When he was with his father instead of Harry, it was easy to pick up on Tobias's supreme ease and belief that nothing could possibly disrupt his plans.

"Ah, my son." Tobias stood up with a potion in a vial, the same poison-green one that he'd rejected earlier that day as not being good enough, and smiled at Severus. The smile was the sanest that Severus had seen him give in months. Not that that changed anything, Severus thought. His father was still mad. And he proved it when he held the potion out, shook it, listened as though for chimes moving in the liquid, and added with a luxurious sigh, "And soon you will be free of the Dark magic, and thus of your chains. I apologize for binding you," he added, with an anxious look, "but it is the only way for me to be safe from you."

Severus wanted to laugh. Yes, because I'm the dangerous one. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back, wondering for a moment if he should go outside the Manor to guide the pack to him. He was in a room on the second floor, a large one that had probably been intended originally for a ballroom. Severus had found himself losing some of the memories of his home as Tobias tortured him. It was a random place, and perhaps Harry would be tempted first to look in the dungeons.

If they even manage to get through the wards.

Severus told himself not to think that way, but he was reduced to shivering convulsively as Tobias began to build a circle around him, chanting steadily in Latin all the while. If there was one thing his father had always been good at, it was holding long and complex incantations in his mind, and that talent, like so many of the others that were inconvenient for Severus, hadn't died with his sanity. Severus watched glittering blue lines of light leap from one object to the other, and his shivering built to the point that the chains rattled.

"Do not be afraid," Tobias said, during a pause in the incantation. "I promise that soon you will be free, perhaps even before the full moon reaches midnight." Then he returned to the spell, and gave Severus a new fear.

Is that enough time for Harry and the pack to get through the wards?Severus bit his lower lip, what was left of it, and turned his head so that he could look at the window again. The sunset light had grown brighter, but he didn't know if the full moon had risen yet, and how long it would take the pack to recover from the change if it had. How close were they? Had Hyacinth challenged Harry again and needed to be subdued? What would happen if the pack changed their minds once they transformed, or rebelled against Harry's leadership right now?

It was no use, no matter how many times he told himself that his fear probably only fed his father's ritual. He had to leave, had to go see what the pack was doing. He closed his eyes and shot his spirit forth from his body.

He was glad that he had come when he saw them, and not because of his own fear. They were magnificent.

The pack, all in wolf form, stood not far from the weakest point in the wards, a seam on a corner of Snape Manor where two wards overlapped. It was also far from any of the defenses that were meant specifically to counter werewolves. Severus looked at their bodies boiling together, their power rising around them in auras that turned the air dark. Celia, Josh, and Leila were anxious, and it showed in their waving tails and the stamping of their slender legs.

Hyacinth and Harry stood alone together in the front of the pack, a match for each other, one black, one scarlet, so large that Severus found himself shivering as he hovered above them. They were both still, as if all their restlessness had been distilled into the three inferior wolves of the pack. They might have been statues, save for the way the wind flattened their fur against their bodies and the wild, brilliant gleam in their eyes.

Harry tilted his head back and howled.

The sound traveled through Severus's mind like a spear, and apparently through the minds of the rest of the pack like a cast net. Hyacinth's head tilted back first, but the others weren't far behind, and then they wove their voices with Harry's. Soaring, shining, changing in Severus's perception from sound to light as they arose, they were a challenge and a call to courage. Severus found himself longing to laugh, even though the sound also held him still with the solemnity of it.

Harry looked up and saw him, giving a single grave nod of his huge head. Severus felt a flash of purest love. In the moment of the attack, he still remembers me. Of course he does. I should never have doubted it.

Harry took a step forwards, then reared slightly like a horse before he charged, probably to build up extra momentum. The rest of the pack spread out around him, until Harry stood at the head of a pentagon. Then they lowered their heads and sped forwards at the same moment. Their power rippled over them in a sparking dome that made Severus breathless. He could see the silvery light dancing off their coats, almost lost in the shadows and pink light of sunset.

They met the wards.

Celia and Josh howled in pain, but continued to strain forwards. Leila hung suspended in the air, her paws cycling wildly, her tongue hanging out of her jaws. All the fur on Hyacinth's head was standing up, and she snarled like a monster out of the fairy tales that his mother used to tell Severus, her eyes unmixed scarlet.

Harry hit the wards, and for a second a sheet of lightning surrounded him. There came a flash so bright that Severus flickered away in instinctive defense.

Then he heard the creaking and cracking of a falling plane of stone, and Harry howled in rage and pain and triumph, before breaking into the belling cry that Severus had heard him use when they were hunting the doe through the forest.

The flash cleared. Severus, now hanging above the trees some distance away, could see a smoking hole in the air, surrounded by golden spiraling threads. The wards had broken and were unraveling all over the walls of the Manor.

Harry stood on the other side of the dissolving magic and howled to encourage his pack, who piled after him, no longer restrained by the defenses they had set out to destroy. Hyacinth was yelping, thunderous sounds that were probably as close as she could come to barking. Leila had all four paws on the ground and laughed with her tongue lolling out, before she shot forwards to stand at Harry's right shoulder. Celia and Josh trotted along at the back, their strides matched, their eyes blinking and their fur singed.

Severus darted out so that he could drift directly above them. Harry tilted his head back, and those wide golden eyes, with the slightest trace of green, found Severus.

"My father has me in a large room on the second floor," Severus called. "Look for several windows in a row with bars in the shape of a cross on them."

Harry howled in response, and then he and the pack turned, running faster than anything on four legs should have been able to, moving around the house in the direction of his torture room.

Severus shut his eyes. Then he flickered back into his body. There was no way that his father wouldn't have felt the assault on the wards, and Severus had to know what he would do next.

"What in the name of Merlin."

Tobias spoke the words in a flat tone that immediately made gooseflesh spring out on Severus's skin in terror. When his father spoke like that, he was dangerous in either state of mind, mad or sane.

Severus opened his eyes in time to see his father snatch up a candle from the table nearby and stare around. During the time Severus had watched the pack, the pink light of sunset had faded into murky purple shadows, so Severus needed the candle, too. Tobias examined the walls for several moments, as though he expected to find the source of the trouble in this room, and then raised his wand and murmured a spell that Severus recognized as a clairvoyance one.

"Werewolves."

There was such incredulity in his tone, such outrage, that Severus could easily imagine him asking how werewolves could have dared to interrupt his ritual. He laughed before he thought better of it.

Tobias spun around and stared at him. Severus shook his head, as much as he could in the chains, and said, "Werewolves, Father? Where would they have come from? They could be abroad tonight, of course, but why would they come here, of all places?"

"I do not know." Tobias was taut now, looking from one window to the next. He lifted his wand as if he would cast a spell, then lowered it again in what looked like indecision. "This is the perfect room for the ritual," he muttered, as if trying to convince himself. "But I cannot use if it I am interrupted. But as long as it is the night of the full moon and the werewolves do not come here, there is no need to move. Why would they come here? They will try the lower doors and windows first. They are mindless beasts, and there are such protections on this place as they cannot break through." He nodded as if satisfied and returned to his Latin chant.

Severus glanced at the wide door that led into this room from the rest of the house. The yellow web of spells spun over it had not been disturbed by the wards falling. Similar yellow strands covered the windows. He feared that Tobias might be right.

He hesitated, wondering if the pack would know what the protective spells were if he simply described them. He hadn't heard Tobias cast them, so he had no idea how to identify them more conclusively.

The stone of the wall under the windows cracked.

Severus turned to stare at it, pain radiating through every part of his body. It was not enough to dim the laughter that bubbled behind his lips. Harry hadn't bothered with the windows or the door at all. He was going to come straight through the walls, which, with the wards fallen, were simply ordinary marble, and apparently couldn't stand up to the weight of a werewolf.

Severus couldn't stand it any longer. Once again, he left his body so that he could observe the pack from the outside.

He was in time to see Harry's paws leave the ground as he hurled himself up and like a boulder thrown by a catapult straight at the wall. It trembled and cracked. As Harry came down, Hyacinth rose in his place, and hit the weakened place he had just struck. The cracking sound repeated, and now Severus could see the hairline fractures speeding through the marble, touching each other, hesitating, and then spreading further.

He crowed, and saw Harry's eyes briefly catch on him as he leaped again. Those golden-green eyes promptly grew brighter, and Harry lowered his head like a battering ram, as though the sight of Severus had given him strength.

Severus danced in place, then flickered back into the main room so that he could see what his father was doing.

Tobias faced the cracking wall, his mouth bent down at a sharp angle, his eyes distant, as though he were trying to recall the last time he had faced a situation like this and couldn't. His wand went up and down. Severus saw his mouth form the syllables of first one spell and then another. Each one was discarded, because Severus doubted that he could make any spell fit the situation in the way that he wanted it to.

"Severus," he murmured suddenly, and turned and looked at his son. "Severus, advise me. What is the best spell to hold off a gathering of werewolves? You must have studied those books more recently than I have, because I have never studied them."

Severus collided with his body again, and had no trouble feigning a terrified expression. "I thought that the wards were supposed to keep them out."

Tobias's wand flicked, and the crystal chains tightened. Severus found it suddenly hard to breathe. The chain that crossed his chest must be pressing down. He coughed and kept on coughing until Tobias sighed and relented, loosening his bonds.

"You must try not to mock me, Severus," he explained gently, stroking his wand. "The wards will not work in this case, because they are gone. There must be another way to face werewolves, and I want you to tell me what it is."

Severus bit his lip. "Doesn't silver hurt them?" Harry, forgive me. But he might kill me if I don't give him something likely.

Tobias relaxed with a chuckle. "It does indeed! I did not think of that." He turned and began to chant at the far wall, opposite the one Harry and Hyacinth were cracking. As Severus watched, enormous silver spearheads formed there, aimed at the pack. He shuddered as he imagined them launching and transfixing the werewolves.

He flashed out of his body again and yelled. Harry, who stood on the ground, tilted his head back in inquiry. Hyacinth came down from her leap and looked in some irritation from her leader to Severus.

"My father is using silver spearheads to anticipate you," Severus shouted. "I don't know what you can do to stop that—"

Harry uttered a series of short howls. Celia, Josh, and Leila stepped up close behind him, and Hyacinth stepped sideways so that her shoulder brushed Harry's. Severus tried to swallow his jealousy. Harry howled again, a long, ululating sound, and the ripples of power rose like a fountain, cascading around him.

Harry's paws left the ground again, but he hadn't jumped this time.

Severus watched open-mouthed as he soared, using his outstretched legs and his tail to direct himself, straight at the crack in the wall. The power was visible around him as fuzzy purple lightning, crackling and catching in his ears and ruff.

Harry slammed into the stone with an impact that made Severus wince. But the werewolf magic was with him, the way it had been when the pack took down the wards, freely yielded by his followers, who loved him just as Severus did. The stone turned to dust where he touched it, and the windows sagged as the wall supporting them vanished. Harry soared straight through and into the room beyond.

Severus willed himself to hover above Tobias's head. He was there in less time than it took to make the wish, and so got to see the moment when his father and Harry first confronted each other.

Tobias's gaping mouth and widened eyes were all he could have wished for.

Harry, however, was not looking at Tobias. He had his head turned and was staring at Severus's body on the torture rack. Severus looked with him, too much in tune not to. He had to look away again when he saw bones and bits of skin there, nothing more. That glance was enough to tell him that he would never walk again, and probably wouldn't have survived if not for the constant application of healing magic.

Harry turned back to Tobias, and his growl made the floor shake.

The hole behind him pulsed with red, and then Hyacinth was stalking up next to Harry, her teeth showing white through the scarlet fur around her mouth, her coat on end, her paws moving silently, the aura of power around her transforming her into a creature of blood and fire.

The rest of the pack howled encouragement from beyond the hole.

For a long moment, the confrontation trembled on a dagger's edge.

Then Harry and Hyacinth charged.

And Tobias launched the silver spearheads.

A. Marie

 **Add to circles**

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	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

This is the last part of Rejoicing in Their Strength. Thanks for reading along. After this, everything will be of my own imagination rather than just bumming off another.

Severus felt a scream building up in his throat. He was never sure if he actually uttered it, because at that point, things moved outside him, and very quickly.

Harry and Hyacinth jumped at the same time, their bodies trailing small lines of black energy of the kind that Severus had felt build up around them earlier. They soared easily over the silver spearheads, and came down on the other side, much closer to Tobias, their mouths open so far that Severus could see the red lining inside their throats before they swept past him and at his father.

Tobias immediately raised a Shield Charm. Harry pulled up in front of it and dashed around to the side, looking for the place where the Charm ended and he could get through. Tobias whirled to face him, his wand dancing, his tongue curling around words that made Severus flinch just listening to them.

Hyacinth put down her head and bulled straight through the shield.

Sparks leaped around her, blue-white and devastating. But though Severus saw a fire start in her fur and smoke billow into her eyes, she never paused. She drove on, though her movement slowed for a moment as though molasses had surrounded her, and the foam dripping from her jaws turned as red as her fur. She roared, once, a sound that would have been at home in a lion's throat.

And the shield broke.

Hyacinth snapped her jaws open and closed them again in Tobias's calf. Severus knew she could have killed him without much fuss, knocked him to the ground and stepped on him or ripped his throat open.

She didn't. Instead, she opened a wound that went all the way through Tobias's leg and then jumped back, yipping contemptuously as he aimed his wand at her.

Tobias staggered, but caught his balance a moment later. His eyes were wide and clear and not at all frightened. Severus saw him aim his wand again and begin to speak a spell that would blast Hyacinth out of existence.

Then Harry bit his hip from the other side.

Severus wanted to laugh, though the only noise that came out of his throat was a bubbling one that probably didn't qualify as amused. He had forgotten that wolves were pack hunters. Tobias would never be able to face one of them alone. He would have to deal with two at the least, and probably more than that, the moment the rest of the pack could get into the house.

And it was all too obvious that Harry had told his packmates not to finish the prey off quickly.

Harry turned a flip in the air to avoid the spell that Tobias aimed at him, a zigzag Blasting Curse that dented the floor right near his paws. Next, he crowded in close, growling in a way that Severus thought was playful. Then he caught a glimpse of Harry's eyes, and suddenly the urge to laugh went away.

Hyacinth dodged in from the front, and landed a minor bite on Tobias's knee, forcing him to turn around again. For a few moments, in fact, Harry and Hyacinth kept him dancing, unable to confront them both at once or coordinate his efforts to hold still, the air full of their snarls and their wagging tails and his flying blood.

Then Tobias backed into a corner and set up a more powerful Shield Charm in front of himself. Hyacinth looked about to charge it anyway, but Harry held her back by laying a paw on her shoulder. Then he used a few heavy brushes of his body to beat out the fire in her coat and stood studying Tobias with his head lifted and his ears pricked. His tail waved slowly back and forth, as though he were trying to study the angles and decide the best way to come at Tobias.

Severus leaped free of his body again, so that he could see from above and warn them if Tobias did something especially clever.

His father had a bewildered, angry expression on his face, as if he could not comprehend how the universe could have turned so conclusively against him. Now and then his hand twitched around his wand, but each time, he changed his mind just as he was about to cast a coherent spell. His eyes kept darting back to Severus's body on the frame of chains. Harry noticed and stepped in between the frame and Tobias, his head lifted until he and Tobias were eye-to-eye, his growl deeper and more threatening still.

"Don't hold back on him for my sake," Severus called. "You can make his death as bloody as you like. I think it's the only way I'll ever truly recover."

Harry tilted his head to show that he heard Severus, and then moved away from the Shield Charm, still carefully blocking Tobias's spell access to Severus. Hyacinth remained where she was for a moment, snarling, but Harry tugged at her hind legs and she joined him. Both of them watched from their new position, apparently to see what Tobias would do. But Tobias remained still. His father was mad, Severus knew, but not such a fool as to challenge two consummate predators with great stamina by running.

Then Harry uttered two sharp yelps. Hyacinth sighed between clenched teeth, nodded her head, and loped over to the frame where Severus hung. For moments, she paused with the black flares of light coiling around her fangs, and then leaned up and bit through the lowest of the crystal chains that held Severus in place.

Tobias said something incredulous and garbled. Then he took a step out of the corner, and the Shield Charm vanished.

Harry came forwards like black wind, his body flattened almost to the floor, his eyes furious, his teeth bared and shining.

Tobias went down, but from his shrieks, Severus knew that Harry hadn't simply ripped out his throat and killed him. He was doing something else instead, and Severus adjusted his angle several times before he could see what it was.

Harry was eating into Tobias's belly.

He had his paws sprawled wide, his claws resting on the edges of Tobias's hips, his head bowed and his jaws opening and closing, chewing through ragged bits of flesh and skin. When he shook his head, blood flew around him, and Tobias let out a scream that had a disbelieving edge to it. He couldn't accept that such pain existed in the world, that scream said.

"Yes," Severus whispered, unable to take his eyes from the opening wound and the glimpses of dark red that he could see through it. "Yes, Harry, teach him to suffer the way that he taught me."

Harry ripped out one more bit of flesh, then turned around and lifted his leg. A splashing yellow stream hit the wound. Tobias convulsed and screamed again, and Harry leaped lightly from his body and whirled around to face him.

Severus drifted over to hover at Harry's shoulder. From this direction, he could see that the wound had stopped bleeding the moment Harry had urinated on it. The skin even had a marginally healthy color to it. What Harry had said about werewolf bodies possessing special properties to heal was true.

Harry didn't want Tobias to die too quickly.

He prowled a few more steps forwards, his body hunched in a way that suggested he was going to leap off the floor any second, his spine flat and his tail raised and stiff. The growl coming out of his throat didn't sound like anything Severus had heard before. He wondered if it had a special meaning, such as, "You are going to die with no chance to say your prayers."

Tobias, his face blank with the overmastering rage that Severus knew he was feeling, raised his wand.

"He'll go for an offensive spell!" Severus called. "He's too angry right now to think about defending himself."

Harry didn't seem to have heard him. He walked steadily forwards instead, his legs rising and falling as if they were the pistons of a machine. His mouth was open, his eyes so wide and so yellow that Severus found looking at them painful, like staring at the sun.

Tobias cast a curse that Severus didn't know the formal name of. He knew it stripped off skin and muscle in the same blow, and that it hurt more than most of the tortures Tobias had used on him. He flinched and put himself between the curse and Harry, not even thinking that his astral body wasn't physical and couldn't block the magic.

Harry growled softly and stepped through Severus, giving him a surge of tingles. Black werewolf magic was glowing around him, making his legs look larger than they should and his head seem to float on a sea of stomclouds.

The curse struck him.

Severus opened his mouth to scream—and paused. The curse blew apart in the midst of the dark werewolf magic, the red struggling madly for a moment against the black before it faded. Then only spinning red motes were left, and they drifted farther and farther apart from each other, blinking bitterly until they dissipated.

Harry stood there, his legs braced as though he'd done nothing more than meet a desperate charge from a deer whose neck he'd snapped, and looked at Tobias.

Severus understood then. Harry knew perfectly well that he could resist wizard magic when he really tried, and he wanted to show Tobias that he could. He wanted to inflict terror on him as well as physical pain.

Tobias dragged himself backwards. The movement opened the wound in his belly again, and it began to bleed. Tobias didn't seem to notice. His hand was shaking, and he couldn't look away from Harry.

Harry lolled his tongue in amusement.

Tobias slumped sideways as if he'd fainted, but Severus saw his eyes still fluttering open to stare at the werewolf in horror. Good, Severus thought viciously. I wasn't able to find escape in unconsciousness. I don't want him to be able to.

Harry lowered his nose to the floor and held it there, so that his face was closer to being at Tobias's level. Gradually, he pulled his tongue back inside his mouth and closed it. Then he, slowly, lifted his lips from his teeth.

Severus, standing to one side now so that he could see better, understood that gesture, too. Harry was showing Tobias the instruments of torture that would mean his death.

A thump came from behind them, and Severus looked over his shoulder to see that Hyacinth had bitten through the last chain and pulled his body from the frame. She stood guard over it on the floor, panting anxiously as she looked at Harry. Harry flicked her one glance that doubtless told her to stay where she was, because she settled down again, her fur almost flat now, one paw resting protectively on Severus's shoulder.

Tobias tried to use the moment when Harry was distracted to hit him with another curse. Harry didn't seem to need Severus's strangled shout of warning, though, since he whirled about neatly on his heels and ducked his head. His jaws met on Tobias's wrist.

In one chop, he bit off Tobias's hand and tossed it across the room, wand and all, and then turned his head to bathe in the spray of blood from the severed limb.

Severus felt a deep, savage contentment as he watched. Yes. This was the end. After this, he would be sure that his father could never hurt him again, in a way that he wouldn't have been if Harry had simply killed his father with a single bite.

Tobias collapsed against the wall and whimpered. Harry stalked forwards on soft paws, eyes wide, mouth bared, jaws dripping. He gave Tobias plenty of time to see that death was coming, and that he could do nothing to stop it.

Tobias tried to shield his face with an arm as Harry leaped.

Severus heard bones crack, skin shred, and a strangled shriek. The arm had done nothing to slow Harry down, though it had given him something else to bite through when he tore Tobias's throat out.

Harry shook his head as though he were killing a rat, and then turned and howled as the blood hit his neck and teeth. For long moments, he looked like all of Severus's more colorful fantasies of revenge, standing there and shining.

Then he lowered his head, shook himself all over, and trotted towards Hyacinth and Severus.

Severus drifted back with him and looked down at his body. His face was the only halfway normal thing on it, and even that bore the holes in the cheeks that Tobias had torn and widened the other day. The rest of his body…Severus shook his head. It looked as though he had been stripped to the bone over and over again, and covered with less replacement flesh each time. He knew there was no way he would ever be normal again. He could spend years recuperating in St. Mungo's and not be normal.

"I don't know how to heal that," he said, and turned to look at Harry. "I don't think that you can, either, even if you piss on me."

Harry's hind leg twitched, as if he was considering trying it, but then he shook his head. He glanced at Hyacinth. She gazed back at him, her eyes wide, her ears up, and whimpered slightly. Severus wished that he could tell what they were thinking. Fuck, he wished they could talk.

"I…" he said, and stopped, because his voice was wavering. Tobias was dead. He was only beginning to realize what came after that, though. He had his freedom, but it wasn't freedom to stand and walk away from the cage he'd lived in for so long. He had the cessation of pain, but that would only last until he went back into his body and someone started probing at him with healing spells. He had the license to use magic again, but that would depend on his being able to lift his arm.

"What am I going to do?" he asked helplessly, and turned to look at Harry, instinctively, as the one in the recent past who had offered him solutions to his problems.

Harry gazed at him with fear in his eyes. Then Hyacinth whimpered again, and lifted a paw, scraping it through the air in a line parallel to Severus's body. Harry glanced at her and showed his teeth. Hyacinth flattened her ears in the way that the other wolves of the pack did when submitting, but repeated the gesture.

"What is it?" Severus demanded. He knew enough to tell that there was an argument going on, though he didn't know what it was about. "If there's something you can do to save me, tell me what it is. I want tolive. I know that it might take me years to live a normal life again, but at the moment, it doesn't look like I'll ever have that chance. Can you make it more likely?"

Harry stared into his eyes for so long that Severus wondered if he had forgotten what they were talking about. Severus swept a hand dramatically at his body. "We need to make a choice soon," he snapped. "Without the healing magic that my father regularly gave me, then my body will simply decline and die. I had the impression that you didn't want that to happen."

Harry blinked and lowered his head. Then, watching Severus closely, he opened his jaws and held them above Severus's shoulder.

He didn't have to do anything else to tell Severus what his argument with Hyacinth had been about.

Severus caught his breath and blinked several times. He expected to feel tears prick along the edge of his eyelids, but of course he wasn't going to feel that in his astral body. He expected to feel fear, even terror, but he felt only excitement.

"You could make me into a werewolf," he said.

Harry immediately backed away from Severus's body and tossed his head to show that he wasn't happy about doing this. Then he sat down like a large, tame dog and watched Severus with heartsick golden eyes.

Severus drifted towards the floor and sat down as best as he could when he knew that he would inevitably drift a bit above its level. His gaze went back and forth from Harry to his body. He looked at Hyacinth then, and she bobbed her head enthusiastically and scraped her paw along the floor. Severus knew that she approved, probably because she thought he made Harry happy and it would be easier for him to do that as a werewolf.

The rest of the pack, having sent up a single howl of triumph from beyond the wall when Harry killed Tobias, was silent. If they knew there was a possibility of this—and Severus thought they probably had—they didn't seem to have any objections.

Severus closed his eyes and began to reason aloud. "I would suffer the same discrimination from society that you do, even if I learn how to balance my human and wolf, because no one will believe that I can do anything of the kind. I'll be able to tell my secret to very few people other than the pack. I'll struggle with the wolf, the hunger, the physical need, that you told me about."

Harry gave a small growl that Severus took as confirmation. He opened his eyes and looked at the floor through his transparent fingers.

"You told me that the change takes away minor magical talents, too," he said. "Your Parseltongue. Celia's ability to become a Metamorphmagus." He could hear his breath quickening, and didn't care. This was the most important decision he had ever made. He was allowed to be a little excited about it. "I won't be able to astrally travel any more, whereas I might if I kept my own body."

Harry extended his head and bobbed it up and down in an exaggerated nod. Then he rubbed his nose against Severus's cheek, using enough magic to make the contact physical, before he pulled back.

"So much to sacrifice," Severus whispered. Then he reached out and laid a hand on the forehead of his physical body, though of course he couldn't feel it.

"But I've been sacrificed for so many reasons already," he said, "reasons that were none of my choosing. My father stole my peace and my body. I won't sleep without nightmares for the rest of my life. I'll always have scars. I'll always have disabilities. And I don't know that that's something I could put up with, when I've got used to the freedom from pain that my astral body gave me."

Harry moved a step forwards. He growled again. Severus nodded to him. "I know that there will be the pain that comes from changing into a wolf," he said. "But that's nothing compared to what I've already put up with."

He smiled, and lifted his hand to touch Harry on the head. The fur was soft against his palm one way when he stroked it, rough the other, and stiff and matted in some places because of the blood. Harry watched him all the while as if Severus was the one with the power to rip out his throat, his body shaking slightly.

"I'll be with you if I'm a werewolf," Severus whispered. "How could you ask me to make any other decision?" He leaned heavily against Harry. "Bite me, please."

Harry was quivering as he took a step forwards and lowered his head. Severus clung to him as long as he could, then leaped back into his physical body. He didn't think it would be a good idea to be caught outside it when the change came.

Agony assaulted him from every direction. Severus fell back, writhing. He wanted to scream, but he didn't think he had the strength. He couldfeel the life leaving his body, no longer dammed and held at bay by Tobias's healing magic.

Harry's jaws crunched down and through his shoulder, only another note in the symphony of pain.

And then, something new happened.

Severus felt searing warmth radiate away from the bite. With the heat came the sensation of another mind forced through his body, a new blood transfused into his veins, and a second being awakening within him.

The new being did not like the fact that the body it shared was in less than peak physical condition. It rolled over twice, gathering power, and then Severus cried out in wonder as grey clouds engulfed him.

He felt his bones taken and molded in godly hands. His body quivered, stretched, and relaxed. He bent and flowed into anguish again, but it was a new kind of anguish, blinding white, and he seemed to ascend steadily towards the sun as it swept through him. His back arched and lengthened, his face responded with its own lengthening, and he shuddered and kept on shuddering, the tremors traveling to the ends of his limbs, or what was left of them.

New knowledge dropped into his mind. These were the ways to hunt; these were the ways to leap and change direction in midair; this was the secret of running on four legs. This was the link to the full moon, and this was the way he would relate to other werewolves. Severus stood under a waterfall of secrets, and felt them transform him into a new person mentally as well as physically, giving him a replacement for the spells he had forgotten as he sustained brain damage under Tobias's tender mercy.

The new being found the brain damage inside his skull, and burned it out, cauterizing the wounds and raising new channels in their place. It was the most awe-inspiring thing Severus had ever felt. He cried out again, and this time the sound emerged from a new place in his throat and with a new depth to it.

He shook his head and stood up on shaky legs. He looked around, sniffing, his eyes appreciating new shades of color, and then tottered forwards so that he could see himself in the shattered remains of the glass vials Tobias had set out.

A lean black wolf looked back at him. He was only a few inches shorter than Hyacinth or Harry, but the aura of power he carried within himself was more compressed. His eyes looked like the yellow light that sometimes covered the sky before a storm. His ears lifted and lowered with deadly grace; he showed his fangs, and they were whiter than his fur.

He took a step sideways, eyes on the reflection, and it did not hurt to walk.

Severus knew that, usually, victims of a werewolf bite did not change immediately; their first transformation would come with the next full moon. But the magic had probably seen no other way to spare his life than by taking him immediately into his new body. Meanwhile, at least if Severus remembered the magical theory behind werewolves right, his human body was resting in what was essentially another dimension, and would heal of its wounds by the time the sunrise came.

He was free.

And he had—

He turned his head to the side, and Harry was already there, slamming into him with a shoulder and rocking him on his feet. Severus lifted his head, and, for the first time, their tongues twined together in the open air.

Harry was looking at him as if he were the center of the universe.

Severus knew there would be problems to come. Among other things, there were the questions the Aurors would ask when they found Tobias dead, and the hunt they would surely launch for werewolf packs. Harry's pack would have to be careful to attract no attention for a time and leave no trace of themselves that could be linked to the killing. Severus knew they probably already had arrangements set up for when they became human again and could cast spells, but if not, he would suggest it.

For the moment, he did not care.

He was free, and he had Harry.

He lifted his head and howled, the sound rising chill and pure and whole from his toes. Hyacinth joined him a moment later, her voice smug.

Then the rest of the pack sang from the base of the wall.

And last of all came Harry, his voice surrounding and captaining and chasing the rest of theirs, thick with strength, thick with rejoicing. A. Marie

 **Add to circles**

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	9. Chapter 9

**I'm sorry if you accidentally got the messed up version before I was able to fix it. I know it reposted 7. I don't know why. Here you go, my bad.**

So this stuff is my idea of what would happen. I'm going to follow their relationship a bit before wrapping it up. My chapters aren't as long as hers were, but eh. They should be about 1k words each. Thanks for all the support so far!

Disclaimer: Some of these characters and this world belongs to JK Rowling, who is wonderful. The source for this story belongs to Lomonaaeren, who is also amazing.

 **Chapter 9**

When he woke, the room he was in was dark. He could feel the thick mattress below him and the satin sheets around him, but that was all. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain crawl up his back and the room filled with light. His attention was drawn to a very regal looking elf at his bedside.

"Mister Snape, you must bees takin' your medicines. Master Harry Potter sir says that yous needs it, sirs."

Severus wanted to inspect the potion he was being handed, but the pain was growing so he just opened his mouth and allowed it to be administered.

"Thank yous, sirs. Master Harry Potter sirs said to tells you sirs that he will bees back after he has cleaned his messes, sirs. Hes will be back befores you starts training sirs."

Severus nodded slowly, having so many questions. He felt abandoned. He expected to wake up with Harry beside him, or at least in the same building, but there was no Harry to be found. This place was unfamiliar and despite feeling safe there, he wanted Harry to be with him.

He ignored the feelings building in him in favor of settling back into a doze. He had much healing to do.

When he woke fully once again, Hyacinth was sitting alert at his bedside. He coughed slightly in surprise, and her eyes darted down to him.

"You are awake," she said emotionlessly. "That is good. We've been worried for you. Hungry?"

Severus nodded, relieved to find that when he went to sit up, his muscled didn't scream in protest.

"Where are we?"

Hyacinth's eyebrows rose in slight surprise.

"We are at Potter Manor. Harry moved us here since we have achieved unity with our wolves and no longer need to remain in the wild all the time, and because you needed proper healing."

Severus closed his eyes at the reminder of Harry. The werewolf he was in love with. He hadn't seen Harry since his rescue. It was making him anxious. Did Harry not want to see him? Was Harry disgusted by him?

Hyacinth didn't seem to pick up on his worry, or maybe she was choosing to ignore it. Either way, she simply presented him with a bowl of porridge and a glass of water before leaving swiftly.

He felt more alone than he had since he placed his trust in Harry.

It had been two weeks, and his muscles were allowing him to get up to use the bathroom and to eat, though he still requested his meals be brought to him in his room. Harry had yet to come see him, and he was frankly a bit worried.

Hyacinth had said that he had come back and was back to training them all, but still the man hadn't come by. He found himself doubting Harry more and more.

Speaking of Harry, the man's deep rumble could be heard through his bedroom door so he crept toward it.

"Of course I am certain, Hyacinth! I know my wolf and I know myself. I want to tell him, and I want to tell him now."

"I'm just making sure you are sure, Harry," she said more calm than she'd ever spoken. "He has just finished healing, and he's missed you. I can sense it. Why have you not come to visit him?"

"I have."

"I mean while he is awake, Harry. You know what I meant. You've been hurting him."

Harry let loose a pained whine from the back of his throat, as if she had harmed him.

"I had to be sure, like you said, before I told him; but I couldn't resist telling him if I saw him awake so I just didn't see him."

He heard a snarl and could tell it belonged to Hyacinth.

"Fix it."

Severus didn't hear Harry approach the door, but he knew that he would come in so he sat on the bed. He felt disgusting, having not been able to shower due to the lack of strength in his legs. He could only stand for a little while, and baths never made him feel clean.

"Severus," Harry spoke, moving toward him.

The older man shook himself out of his thoughts, chancing a glance toward Harry before looking away.

"How are you feeling?"

He shrugged in response, not wanting to speak in case he might cry. Harry hadn't come to see him in 14 days. What was he supposed to think?

"I am so sorry, Severus."

Severus stared hard at the floor, gasping when he felt his eyes start to sting. Harry was here to tell him to go away. He was going to tell him that he didn't want him anymore. That's what it was. He was disgusted. He was revolted. He—

"Baby, calm down," Harry hurriedly soothed, rushing forward to take the man into his arms. Severus was healed, yes, but he was still very slight due to lack of food over the past year. Severus hiccupped, feeling Harry tighten his hold and pull him into his lap. It felt so good to be held like this.

"Severus, what is it? Tell me."

He shook his head harshly, pulling away halfheartedly only to be pulled back into Harry's chest.

"Severus."

The older man sighed heavily, the emotions filling him at seeing Harry and being held and feeling tired becoming too much, and he rested his weight against Harry fully and said the words he never wanted to admit out loud.

"I missed you."

Harry gripped him close.

"I am so sorry that I was not here, baby. I wanted to be. I had to destroy the evidence of what happened at the Manor, and then I simply couldn't build up the courage to tell you what I need to. It's no excuse though. I should've been here for you and I'm so sorry that I wasn't.

"What do you need to tell me? Do I need to leave?"

Harry jerked sharply as if he'd been slapped.

"Leave? Why on earth would I want you to leave?"

Severus crinkled his nose in confusion.

"You've done what you felt you had to. There is no need for me to stay.

Harry's face dropped.

"I kind of thought there was more to it than that."

Severus looked down. He didn't know what to say.

"I don't want to leave," he admitted softly, causing Harry to peek at him.

"No?"

Severus shook his head, curling into his holder.

"No."

Harry smiled.

"Baby, I don't want you to leave ever."

Severus' eyes widened.

"You still like me?"

Harry shook his head, bringing his lips down to the man's forehead.

"I love you, you idiot."

Severus sighed, relaxing at once.

"Oh, good."

 **TBC**


	10. Raksha

Harry stripped himself quickly and efficiently, setting the temperature of the water before turning back around. A small frown reached his lips when he saw that Severus had yet to disrobe.  
"Severus?" He called to him. "Are you planning on showering with your clothes on, pet?"  
The man crossed his arms snootily.  
"Of course not."  
Harry sighed.  
"Then why are you still dressed? There is no need to be shy; I have seen it all before."  
Severus thought that seeing him while he was being tortured and sharing the intimacy of a shower were two entirely different things, but he wasn't going to dispute Harry out loud. His legs were already shaking from the effort to hold himself upright.  
Harry stepped closer to him, lifting his arms and removing his shirt before placing his arms around Harry's shoulders.  
"Hold on to me," Harry told him. "It will help you keep balance on your legs right now."  
Severus listened, surprised when Harry simply spelled his pants off with a snap of his fingers. He was standing there, bare and exposed, but Harry was only looking at his face.  
"Are you alright?"  
Severus nodded shakily, withholding a yelp when Harry lifted him over the ledge into the tub.  
"Perhaps we should sit first," Harry suggested. "I could help you wash your hair so that you can rest some before attempting to stand and shower."  
Severus nodded in agreement, too embarrassed about his weakness to speak.  
Harry massaged his scalp slowly, luring him into a state of drowsy calm. He could feel all of Harry pressing comfortably against his back, and never had he felt so cared for.  
"Are you ready to try standing?" Harry asked him.  
He nearly forgot that he was naked until Harry gasped softly, gazing upon him as he stood.  
"You are beautiful, Severus."  
Severus looked down at his skinny body, pale scarred skin stretched over bones, his ribs visible, barely any hair to speak of. He curled his lip in disgust.  
"Don't lie to me, Potter."  
Harry moved forward, holding him close to his body. He lifted his chin, kissing him softly on the lips before stepping back to run his knuckles down his partner's side.  
"You are healing. You are hurt. You are still malnourished," he admitted. "But you are so beautiful, baby."  
Severus shook his head, scrubbing harshly.  
"I'm not easy to look at even when I'm healthy."  
Harry huffed, taking the rag from his hands it replace his scrubbing with softer strokes.  
"You are a treasure, alterum."  
The older man made to argue before snapping his mouth shut, jerking around to look at Harry.  
"Alterum?" Severus whispered, sure that he had heard him wrong.  
"Alterum," Harry repeated, looking into Severus's eyes. The other man was breathing shakily, his eyes filled with wonderment.  
"This is what you realised?" He whispered in question. "What you have to tell me?"  
Harry smiled softly, bringing the man against him despite their nudity.  
"Yes," he responded just as softly. "My wolf has claimed you as his own. Our own. My own. You are my mate. My Alterum. My Omega."  
Severus felt himself cling to Harry, not embarrassed in the least at his right grip because the younger man responded by picking him up fully and holding him close.  
"I am yours?"  
Harry laughed.  
"You are mine."  
**

* * *

Severus sighed. The ache had reached his back again, and it simply refused to fade away. Of course, he was used to being in pain and a little back ache wasn't something he was going to complain about, but it was annoying and far different than his usual  
discomfit.  
His muscles were sore from the rigorous training he was doing to get back in shape, though Harry told him that his training was nothing compared to what the others had to do. Speaking of Harry, where was that man?  
He stood to fetch him, falling to the ground in surprise when his back spasmed.  
The object of his thoughts was lifting him up in less than a minute, setting him onto the couch.  
"You have been pushing yourself too much, pet," he said, his voice holding the slight rumble of a growl within it. "You are not a hunter like the rest of us."  
Severus crinkled his nose.  
"Then what am I?"  
Harry sniffed his neck, nuzzling it before giving him a soft lick. Severus whined softly, spreading his legs slightly and arching up.  
Harry chuckled in satisfaction, petting his stomach to calm him.  
"You, my dearest Severus, are a raksha."  
Severus turned to straddle his mate, leaning against his chest.  
"Raksha? I am not a female, Harry. I cannot be a raksha."  
Harry growled lowly, observing his little mate as he moved his neck to the side in offering and pressed closer to him.  
"You are not female," Harry admitted easily, "but you are a raksha. You are a bearer, my heart. You are not meant to hunt, but rather to help heal and take care of the pack and any future pups."  
Severus shook his head.  
"But what kind of bearer can't bear children? That doesn't make sense."  
Harry pushed Severus so that he was laying down with Harry leaning over him.  
"Severus, my love," he said calmly, "you can bear children. This is what I'm telling you. You are a man, yes, but you are also a magical wolf. You can bear pups."  
Severus stared at him for a long time before turning his head away.  
"I cannot have children."  
Harry frowned in confusion.  
"Severus, yes you can," he explained. "I know it's a surprise, but-"  
"No!" Severus yelled, pushing Harry off of him. In his shock Harry let him.  
"I can't have kids! I can't! I'm a man! I cannot have cubs!"  
And he ran from the room, a confused Harry following after him only to end up staring blankly at the door to his mate's room.  
The door was locked, and though he could probably get through it he knew that to do that right now would only make Severus more angry.  
He wanted time alone.  
Harry sighed, deciding to go get some advice from his pack before continuing on.

TBC 


	11. Chapter 11

Harry laid his head against the door, frazzled and upset that he had upset his mate so much so soon.

"Severus, love, please open the door," he begged. "You haven't eaten since breakfast, and it's nearly nightfall."

The lock clicked under him, and he sighed in surprised relief.

Harry walked in hesitantly, pressing the door closed behind him. He creeped toward Severus, who was curled up on the window ledge.

Harry brought his arms around him, relaxing slightly when Severus leaned back against him.

"I am not going to require or even request that you bear children for me, pet," he told him in a voice barely above a whisper, "but I do wish to discuss why you are so very fearful of the idea that you may be able."

His mate did not speak for quite some time, turning around to rest his face against Harry's chest.

"I want children," a small voice admitted, and Harry thought his heart would burst with happiness. "Yet I would be a terrible parent."

Harry gripped his chin, forcing him to look him in the eye.

"You will not be your father, Severus."

"But what if I am?!" He shouted, harshly shoving at Harry's chest.

Harry growled in response, pulling both of Severus' hands above his head and pressing him into the wall. Severus turned his head to the side in submission, going limp and allowing Harry to settle firmly between his legs.

"You will not speak to me with such disrespect," Harry growled, relaxing his hold so that he was not hurting his Omega. "Calm, mate."

Severus shivered and whimpered slightly, flinching when Harry's face moved closer.

Harry let a rumble leave his chest, pressing closer but more gently.

"You know that I will not harm you," he said, his voice calm again.

Severus nodded, going limp again.

Harry nosed at his bared neck, laying little licks along his collarbone.

Severus purred slightly, wrapping his legs around Harry's waist. Harry released his hands, picking Severus up to sit back on the window ledge with the man in his lap.

"Do you think yourself stronger than I?" Harry offered. "Do you think that you could best me? That I cannot keep my Omega under control if I must?"

Severus shook his head.

"No, Al- Harry."

Harry held back his chuckle, rubbing soothing patterns onto his mate's back.

"You may call be Alpha, pet; or any other title that you wish. If I do not like it, I will tell you. Do not curb your instincts," he ordered.

Severus rested his head in the curve of Harry's neck, breathing out, "Yes, alpha."

"I will never abuse my control over you, Omega, but I would never allow you to bring harm to our cubs."

Severus nuzzled Harry's neck.

"You promise?" He whispered.

Harry held him tighter, seeing how much of a worry this was for his little Omega.

"Of course."

And Harry continued holding his Severus, even as his breathing deepened and slowed and his body became lax.

Hyacinth pushing the door open, looking through at the pair.

Harry cast a silencing bubble around his sleeping mate.

"Yes?"

The powerful werewolf bowed her head slightly.

"Your proposition went through. The pack is waiting to be given permission to go to Bulgaria."

Harry nodded, looking down at Severus.

"I think it best if we part now, temporarily. You will lead them."

Hyacinth shook her head.

"I am no alpha!"

Harry growled, causing his mate to shift.

Harry settled quickly before turning his head back to her.

"We have discussed this! You are an alpha, and you will lead them. We will settle here to continue the fight in England. You and the pack will have the freedom you need in Bulgaria, so I wish you to go. I cannot go with you."

She snarled.

"Why can you not come with us!?"

Harry looked down at Severus, tracing his form with his large palm.

Hyacinth gasped.

"He is a bearer," she whispered.

He nodded, and she settled.

"We will come to visit after we are settled," she told him. "I wish you the happiness of a thousand full moons."

Harry smiled, pressing a kiss to his mate's forehead.

"I have it right here."

Leila, Celia, Josh, and Hyacinth stood at attention, waiting. They waited not long before Harry arrived to wish them well.

"Viktor will be waiting for you at the portkey point to escort you to the home I have secured for you. You will floo call me to tell me you have arrived safely. I have sent access to a joint vault to the wizarding bank of Bulgaria for you. It will surely be enough for you all to last until you get a job and are settled in. The house I have for you will remain in your names. You will always have a place to stay."

"Thank you, Harry," Josh said, "for taking care of us."

Harry smiled at them.

"Soon we will have freedom here in England as well, and you can come back home if you wish to."

Hyacinth held out the rope for them all to hold onto.

"We'll see you again, Harry."

He stared at the spot from where they disappeared from for a long minute, only looking away when he felt Severus' long fingers wrap around his own.

"We could go with them, Harry," he said. "If you wanted."

Harry kissed his forehead.

"You are not ready to be moved, little one. You are still getting your strength, and I wish for our bond to be solid before we try to do other things."

Severus let Harry pull him against himself, tucking him close.

"We will follow, perhaps when we have mated fully, or we may remain here as I try to change the law regarding us. Whichever you wish. I want us to stay here in my home until you have gotten used to your wolf and your omega instincts. Other wolves around you would only aggravate your omega while we remain unbonded anyway, and I do not wish for that to affect our relationship."

Severus nodded his understanding, moving with Harry to the training room so that he could begin his daily exercises.

"Besides," Harry said as they entered, "Hyacinth needs a submissive partner, and I believe that she will find one in Josh once she accepts her role as Alpha."

TBC


	12. Desire

**So, obviously, I've fallen off of the face of the earth and no longer exist. I am so incredibly sorry for the late update as well as the news I'm bringing with it.**

 **This story is up for adoption.**

 **I've found that I simply don't know where to go with it and how to go about it. I'm not really enjoying writing it, and so I'm going to give it to someone that will.**

 **If you wish to continue this fic, please send me a PM and I will read some of your work before deciding whether to pass it on. I want this fic finished, but I want it finished well. If your writing has pretty alright grammar and spelling, and you'd like to take on the challenge, I welcome you to do so.**

 **If you know anyone that you think would be good to finish this fic, please send them a DM letting them know I'm interested. I just can't continue it, but that doesn't mean it should be abandoned.**

 **Now onto what may possibly be my last update for this story.**

Chapter 12: To desire an Alterum

Severus settled against the cushion of the sofa in the library, reading once more on the understandings of the Raksha. It was such an odd concept, but rather than feel emasculated, he felt brought up by it. Harry let him know how much he meant to him every day with little touches and smiles, and he knew that the young man cared for him greatly.

This led him to a new issue.

Harry was always caring for him and leading him, but he never took it any further. He had not told him that he loved him since that first night, and he hadn't done more than kiss his forehead either. He found himself doubting that the alpha wolf even wanted him beyond friends.

But that was ridiculous! Of course, Harry wanted him. He was his Alterum! His mate!

Yet, the question lingered.

-HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP-

Harry rested against the doorframe, watching Severus turn the page. Severus stretched up, letting out a yawn and letting the hem of his shirt ride up, and Harry had to look away as to not march in and lay Severus out against a desk right then and there. The man was most tempting to Harry, but he was still healing.

Severus was certainly making progress, but he was still so fragile compared to the rippling muscles of a competent alpha wolf.

He padded away, letting himself release a sigh. His mate and him had been alone for a month and a half now, and he still hadn't found the courage to breach the subject of their relationship.

The moment didn't wait up for Harry.

Severus jerked awake, shivering and upset. Tears were pouring down his face, but he didn't understand why.

He didn't think, he just got up and ran to Harry's room right down the hall. When Severus reached the bed, he immediately climbed on top of Harry, causing the bigger man to jerk awake. Severus was flipped and slammed onto the bed in a matter of seconds, Harry's large hand wrapped around his neck before Harry gasped.

"Severus?"

Harry moved his hand from his neck to his cheek, looking him over and wiping away the unexpected tears.

"Baby, what is it? What's wrong?"

Severus clung to Harry, not understanding the fear that hadn't left him and the lack of control that he felt.

Harry rolled back over and sat up, pulling his alterum onto his lap to rock him back and forth.

"Hush," Harry soothed. "I'm right here. You're all right."

Severus did not say anything, and soon he was asleep. Harry breathed deeply, moving to lay them both down and settle in for the night. His mate would tell him tomorrow, but for now they needed rest.

-SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-

When Severus woke, he was tucked firmly into Harry's side. He could feel the warm breath of his alpha touching his hair, and his heavy arm wrapped snugly around his waist.

He scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion, muddling through how he got into Harry's room… his bed… his arms.

"Stop thinking so hard," he heard rumble from the area above his head. "The mornings are not for thinking. They are for enjoying."

Severus shifted, and Harry lifted him more fully onto his body.

"How are you feeling, pet?"

Severus's confusion only grew, and it showed clearly on his face.

"You showed up here a mess last night, Sev. You wouldn't tell me what was wrong."

Severus shrugged.

"I don't remember that."

Harry smiled understandingly.

"It's alright. You know that you're welcome here anytime."

Severus jumped a little, narrowing his eyes at Harry.

"I am?"

Harry frowned in thought.

"Of course, Severus. You are my mate. You are always welcome with me."

Harry lifted Severus' chin so that he could see him fully and clearly.

"I meant it when I told you that I loved you, little one."

Severus stared at him in wonder, sliding up to settle into the crook of his neck.

"I love you, too, Alpha."

Harry smiled, holding the other man close.

"So you don't remember why you came down last night?"

Severus winced.

"I remember waking up really frightened, but I don't remember why or what I was afraid of. I only knew that I had to get to you."

Harry rubbed his back soothingly.

"You've been reading on Rakshas lately, haven't you?"

Severus nodded against his alpha.

"Yes. I know what it means."

Harry moved Severus out of his spot, forcing the other man to look at him.

"You are feeling insecure with me, little one? What is it?"

Severus' breathing sped up, and he averted his eyes to the door.

"No, pet. You need to talk to me. What's going on?"

Severus shook his head, and he didn't speak.

Harry frowned at his alterum, guiding his chin back to face him.

"Raksha," he spoke, his voice nearly a growl. Severus found himself spreading his legs and cocking his head to the side in submission immediately, his eyes half-mast already.

"What is bothering you?"

Severus whimpered, his lips quivering.

"What is causing you fear?" Harry said, softening back into a comforting presence.

Severus winced, clenching his fingers in Harry's shirt.

"I fear that you do not desire me."

Harry gasped, lifting up as Severus continued.

"I am bothered because you don't want me."

Harry wrapped his arms around Severus' waist and pulled him as close as possible.

"My mate," he purred. "Never fear that I don't desire you. I am trying to keep you comfortable, and you aren't fully healed yet—"

Severus shoved at Harry's chest, surprising the alpha with his ferocity.

"You don't want me! You haven't kissed me! You haven't done anything!"

Harry pushed the older man onto the mattress, pressing between his legs and bringing his face down next to the other's.

"I don't want you?" He pondered aloud, rubbing himself slightly on the man below him so that he could feel his desire.

"I don't kiss you? I haven't done anything?"

He brought his lips down a breath away from Severus'.

"I didn't realize you were wanting, sweetheart. Let me remedy that."

And Harry connected their mouths. He wasn't forceful like how he had been speaking, but soft. He didn't want their first kiss to be harsh. Harry moaned when Severus wrapped his long legs around his waist, bringing him closer. Severus twisted Harry's hair in his fingers, holding on tightly as Harry lifted them both back into a sitting position.

Harry and Severus stayed connected until breathing became a necessity, and when they broke apart Harry only pulled Severus further into his lap.

"I love you, alterum; and I desire you. We are moving at your pace here."

Severus nodded, breathing heavily with relief and exertion.


End file.
